Confrontation and Cooperation: The Complicated Relationship Between Homeschoolers and Public Schools

Throughout the modern homeschool movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, homeschooling families have clashed with public institutions. Early homeschoolers joined together to win favorable legislative and judicial outcomes that resulted in the legalization of homeschooling in all 50 states by the early 1990s. Homeschoolers continue to face opposition from professional educators and the organizations that advocate for them. But although some interactions between homeschoolers and public schools are confrontational, in other cases, public school districts offer a variety of resources and opportunities to home educators. Some homeschoolers accept public school offerings through charter or online schools that allow children to remain at home while completing public school curricula. Others have gained the right to access public school extracurricular programs including high school sports. Not all homeschoolers agree on the merit of participating in programs offered by public schools. It is likely that instances of both cooperation and confrontation will continue.     

“Homeschooling Is Our Protest:” Educational Liberation for African American Homeschooling Families in Philadelphia,PA

As increasing numbers of researchers, parents, and youth are rethinking the traditional school system as the default educational option in the United States, homeschooling is not only growing in size but also in philosophical scope and demographic diversity. African Americans particularly have been one of the steadiest-growing homeschooling demographics. Among the few ethnographic accounts of black homeschooling families, youth perceptions tend to be overlooked. This article builds upon scholarship exploring racial injustices in education with new qualitative research: observations and interviews with 15 African American homeschooling families living in Philadelphia. This research reveals a variety of motivations undergirding African American families’ homeschooling decisions and perspectives, including commentary from youth homeschoolers. Previous research has critiqued homeschooling as a neoliberal exercise in privatization that entrenches the social reproduction of inequality, or operates as a destabilizing threat to public interest. Yet, findings from this study complicate these assessments by examining the ways African American homeschoolers enmesh themselves within educational reform conversations, some viewing homeschooling as a form of political protest.     

A Survey of Families in a Charter Hybrid Homeschool

“Hybrid homeschools” generally operate as formal schools 2–3 days per week. The rest of the week students are homeschooled. These entities therefore share some aspects of conventional schooling along with some aspects of homeschooling and are classified in a variety of ways by their states, local districts, and even their own administrations. Most hybrid homeschools around the nation tend to be private and religiously affiliated, though some public models have emerged. The purpose of this study was to better understand parents’ stated preferences for choosing to enroll their children in a charter school that is organized as a hybrid homeschool network in southern California. An electronic survey was sent through the network’s CEO to all enrolled families asking questions regarding demographics, stated values, and desired sources of information. The results of this survey find that these hybrid homeschool families are on average slightly more ethnically diverse, less wealthy, and less educated compared to private, religious hybrid homeschoolers, but are also more ethnically diverse, more wealthy, and more educated compared to their sponsoring school district. These families tend to place more value on individualized attention and the learning environment than on religion, safety, or formal academic issues when choosing a hybrid homeschool compared to their private, religious counterparts.     

Elementary teaming: Learning improvement or administrative ploy

Trends suggest that homeschooling continues to increase among black families. Yet, research on contemporary Black homeschooling remains scarce. Given black educational history, the phenomena of Black families choosing homeschooling over public and private schools in the post-Desegregation era is worthy of investigation. Further, documenting the ways in which black homeschool families engage their children in learning will inform the needs of black education in conventional schools, public and private. The phenomenon of increasing black home education represents a radical transformative act of self-determination, the likes of which have not been witnessed since the 1960s and ‘70s. This work highlights the primacy of agency among black homeschooling families. Thus, contrary to the negative depictions of black families as disengaged from the educational pursuits of their children, we evoke hooks's (1990) notion of homeplace to argue that black home education represents a vehicle of resistance to institutionalized racism and ideological mismatches between black families and their children's educational needs.     

The Chronicles of Homeschooling Gifted Learners

Homeschooling only has become a choice for many families of gifted children during the last two decades, as the number of gifted families has grown steadily along with the general homeschool population (Lubienski, Puckett, & Brewer, 2013). The current study examines a group of homeschooling mothers of gifted children who publish and maintain publically available blogs about their homeschooling experiences. In this qualitative study, four themes emerged (a) unintentional homeschoolers, (b) curriculum pivoting, (c) reflection as progress, and (d) reaching forward and back. In the current study we have identified some interesting but preliminary findings about families who homeschool their gifted child or children. We should continue working to understand the phenomenon of gifted homeschooling and its implications for schools and for society.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

Tolerance and Liberty: Answering the Academic Left's Challenge to Homeschooling Freedom

Millions of children in the United States are educated in the home. Millions more receive their education from private institutions. For parents, a common reason for seeking alternatives to public education is the desire to ensure that they receive instruction in accord with their religious beliefs. In many cases, these beliefs include exclusive claims about the nature of God, salvation, or morality. Recently, several scholars have argued that, to achieve a diverse and tolerant society, homeschooling and private education should be abolished or severely limited. They have contended that “a liberal multicultural education,” which will expose children to different ideas and perspectives, is necessary for the preservation of democratic values. Homeschooling, they claim, leads to close-mindedness and intolerance because children are taught to affirm certain beliefs which imply that not all other traditions are equally valid. The argument that homeschooling should be banned or severely restricted, however, relies on illiberal and intolerant premises that have already been discredited as inconsistent with our constitutional liberties. Although tolerance may be a valuable objective, it cannot be forcibly imposed by using the state's power to create philosophical homogeneity. True tolerance and diversity require a constitutional commitment to liberty for all, not a “constitutional norm” of silencing the “intolerant.”     

Homeschooling,Virtual Learning,and the Eroding Public/Private Binary

ABSTRACT

Regulators ubiquitously dichotomize schooling into two discrete sectors: public and private. Although homeschooling is regulated in some contexts as a third sector, the general approach is to treat it as a species of private education by subjecting it to public regulation while simultaneously denying it public funds. But the public/private binary is increasingly difficult to sustain as charter schools multiply and, especially, as virtual schooling increasingly penetrates primary and secondary education. Public school systems are deploying virtual education in ways that erode once impermeable walls between public and private. Many obstacles to homeschooling will fall with those walls—particularly obstacles related to government financing of homeschooling activities.     

Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It

This article reviews research on homeschool learner outcomes and evaluates opposition to homeschooling. It synthesizes research on learner outcomes related to homeschooling in areas of students’ academic achievement and children's social, emotional, and psychological development and the success of adults who were home educated and finds generally positive outcomes on a variety of variables are associated with homeschooling. The author identifies four classes of negativity expressed toward home-based education by the education profession, such as the claims homeschooling is bad for the collective good and that without much state regulation significant numbers of homeschooling (home schooling) parents will harm their children. The evaluation reveals that proactive opposition to homeschooling and calls for significant state control over homeschooling do not offer any empirical research evidence that homeschooling is bad for individual children, families, neighborhoods, or the collective good. The alleged harms of homeschooling or arguments for more control of it are fundamentally philosophical and push for the state, rather than parents, to be in primary and ultimate control over the education and upbringing of children so they will come to hold worldviews more aligned with the state and opponents of state-free homeschooling than with the children's parents and freely chosen relationships.     

What Have We Learned About Homeschooling?

This article discusses quantitative research on homeschooling, including the available data, pitfalls of using the data, estimates of the number of homeschooled children, part-time homeschooling, and why families homeschool. I compare research on homeschooling to research on charter schools, voucher programs, and private schools.     

THE STATE,PARENTING, AND THE POPULIST ENERGIES OF ANXIETY

In this essay James Conroy raises the question of how far the state should engage in the rearing of children, looking in particular at homeschooling as a site for contestation. He considers this question by looking specifically at recent developments in the United Kingdom around the elision of child safeguarding issues with concern about the control of home education. In the first part of the essay, Conroy explores some general questions about the relation between politics and populism, and the consequences for the prerogatives of parents. In the second part of the essay, he interrogates constructivist accounts of the family and offers something of a historical corrective to the widely held view (emanating from Philippe Ariès) that the very conceit of the family is a “modern” invention. This analysis leads Conroy to conclude that, while states do have a proper locus in the upbringing of children, they must make certain presumptions in favor of the parent if governmental responses to home education are to be considered political rather than populist and “controlling.”     

Homeschooling in Brazil: A Matter of Rights or a Political Debate?

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analysis of the right to education in Brazil in light of the growing number of Brazilian families practicing homeschooling. The debate is recent in Brazil. Here we present an analysis of international literature on homeschooling, Brazilian literature on the right to education, and an appraisal of lawsuits against Brazilian families for teaching their children at home. In light of truancy regulations and the evolution of a right to education in Brazil, homeschooling creates legal and political challenges.     

Finding a Golden Mean in Education Policy: Centering Religious and Public Schools

The separation between Church and State, private and public education, is blurring, and coming together, as the government gives families vouchers to attend private and religious schools. Religious groups are starting and supporting their own charter schools, and local jurisdictions (cities and counties) are providing free transportation and food services to children attending private schools. What emerges, and is the focus of this analysis, is the new “middle ground,” a “golden mean,” by which public schools learn diversity and choice while private/religious schools are helped by public programs and funds. The oldest, perhaps, was Lyndon Johnson's compromise with the Catholics to get Title 1 passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sends public school teachers into private schools to help children in need. This study examines the emergence of a middle group in public–private education, and how the policies are working and what's changing. It argues that the child is the center of education, and government and private agencies are changing and should come together to serve the clients, the children.     

Homeschool Parents and Satisfaction with Special Education Services

ABSTRACT

Homeschooling is controversial for a variety of reasons. One concern is whether families are sufficiently equipped to serve students with disabilities. We investigate this issue by assessing parental satisfaction with the special education services that their child is receiving in various educational sectors (e.g., homeschool, traditional public, public charter, and private). Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. households from the National Household Education Survey, we find that parents who homeschool are more satisfied than parents of children in traditional public schools and a variety of private schools with the special education services that they are receiving. Despite obvious selection bias in our sample, we view parental satisfaction as one of many important indicators for the quality of special education services. The results from this study suggest that homeschooling is a potentially beneficial option for serving students with disabilities, though additional research examining other student outcomes would be invaluable.     

“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies

This essay begins with the observation that the term “voice” is frequently used in rhetorical studies literature. Interestingly, rhetorical “voice” means different things to different scholars. This essay seeks to accomplish two tasks related to “voice.” First, it clarifies the conceptual confusion regarding “voice” found in the literature by relating it to a tension between “speaking” and “language.” Second, to avoid this tension, this essay presents a case study in which a notion of “voice” is posited that is constitutive of the public acknowledgment of the ethical and emotional dimensions of public discourse.     

Caciques,schools, and schoolteachers in Spain from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show the influence of caciquism on the creation and functioning of public schools as well as its effect on the professional performance of teachers. We have used the model developed by Abram de Swaan, who suggested that three social sectors be distinguished to analyse the attitudes that spark the dissemination of literacy: the metropolitan elite; local dignitaries; and regional communities. Here, we describe and attempt to explain the uncooperative attitude of the local dignitaries or “caciques” towards public schools. The third section deals with the control of the educational administration by caciquism and the private profit that some of these local figures reaped from the budgets assigned to the public schools. Lastly, we will present examples of how the local authorities favoured schoolteachers who were political patrons of theirs and persecuted those who belonged to the opposition.     

Private tutoring through the internet: globalization and offshoring

The private tutoring industry has come forward as the third great sector of education. The common sense representation about private tutoring is changing. The growing search for supplementary educational support services and the technological innovation have created a new paradigm. This paper focuses on one of the most interesting faces of this new phenomenon: the rise of private tutoring through the internet. The very promising market is considered by some analysts as a true explosion on the offer and demand levels. Many families are feeling increasingly unable to provide their children the “extra help” they need to meet the requirements of further steps in the education system. So, for several reasons, they are outsourcing and even offshoring this so important and competitive task. The field is full of learning and market opportunities. This is the new globalized world of the less shadow and progressively growing private tutoring in the XXI century.     

略论历代对花间词的评价

自花间词诞生后,其在词史上的价值被词学家开始关注。宋代文坛上,词学家多赞誉花间词的体制精巧、格调优美等,同时,也有人指责其属于艳情词,有害于文学的政治教化功能的发挥;金元时期,批评家直接指出花间词是亡国之音,此时的文人也有推崇花间词的,说其能婉转地表现情感,实质是尊崇词体文学;明代文坛,推崇香艳的审美风尚,词学家对花间词的评价认识在此时发生了非常重要的变化,词学家从花间词的字法、句法、格调、意境等方面对花间词进行整体研究,进而极力推崇花间词的创作模式;清代词坛上,词学家继续延续明代文坛对花间词的认识,其中陈廷焯评其"沉郁"、况周颐评其"穆境",是对花间词给予高度的肯定。     

Orchestrating policy ideas: philanthropies and think tanks in US education policy advocacy networks

While think tanks are a global phenomenon, their role in shaping US policy offers an instructive example of think tank influence on policymaking due to the immensity of resources directed towards those ends, with education policy serving as a prime example. Focusing on a distinct set of “incentivist” education policies, this analysis describes the think tank-philanthropy linkage in US education policymaking. We offer examples of how philanthropists provide financial, empirical and political resources to advance think tanks’ policy ideas through advocacy networks; describe the multiple functions performed through advocacy networks of intermediary organisations, noting the diffusion of form and function around tasks such as knowledge production, political and media support; and we highlight the ways in which US venture philanthropists and think tanks connect around “idea orchestration” in order to advance ideas in policy processes. We suggest that, especially in the realm of incentivist policies, think tanks do not appear to produce or incubate but rather promote ideas, and actually often only a single idea. The concluding discussion considers advantages evident in idea orchestration and the implications of private control of public policymaking.