How the Government Harasses Homeschoolers

A recent story appearing in the World Net Daily about a homeschool family being ordered by a judge in Utah to enroll their children in public school is not an isolated case. The Utah school district is claiming they never received her statement of intent to homeschool and even though her copies of the paperwork were produced and the parents took steps to rectify the allegations of truancy, the judge still ordered her to enroll her children in public school or be threatened with jail time as well as having her children removed from her home even though there have been no allegations of educational neglect. The judge overseeing this case is anti-homeschooling and stated that "homeschooling is a failure".

This judge is entitled to his own opinion but when he uses his place as a judge to enforce those opinions it starts stepping on Constitutional rights and there is a problem. This isn't the first case in recent weeks where parents are being bullied, coerced and blackmailed into doing what the government believes is best. Recently in Prince George's County, Maryland, a large number of parents were forced into court over the vaccination of their children. They were ordered to have their children vaccinated in the court room or face jail time and fines.

These two cases make one wonder if the state governments are getting a little too abusive of their powers and overstepping their rights. First, education is not mentioned in the Constitution. This means that overseeing of education falls to the states and to the people under the Tenth Amendment. However, sometime during the Carter Administration we were given the Department of Education, a federal government entity, to oversee education. This has led to federal educational laws, such as No Child Left Behind. States have been embracing these federal laws even though it could be argued if they are in fact constitutional.

These federal laws are making it more and more difficult for homeschoolers. Public servants like this judge in the Utah case would have you believe that although homeschooling is legal, it's not in a child's best interest, and will force public school enrollment when possible despite studies showing that homeschool kids do better on state standardized tests out performing public school children as well as homeschool children winning local and national spelling and geography bees.

Frequently homeschool families will be visited by social services on anonymous calls of truancy or neglect because a family does not send their child to public schools. The social workers demand to see proof of homeshcooling and try to ascertain that educational requirements are being met, even though they have no jurisdiction over education. Often times the Homeschool Legal Defense Association steps in on these cases and gets them resolved quickly.

Our third year homeschooling we had one of these visits for "educational neglect" that escalated into almost two years of harassment based on not prejudice not only against homeschoolers but against large families in general. I was told that there was no way I "could possibly be able to home educate all of the children" and that "they really needed to be in school where they could be accounted for." At the time I had six children (I now have seven) and only three of them were of school age. A teacher is expected and capable of teaching twenty plus children at one time but a parent is incapable of teaching three because it's too many? I have never understood this logic.

I think that part of it comes from groups like the National Education Association (NEA), a national teachers union and political action committee that constantly push for federal education laws to protect their jobs and interests. They pass resolution after resolution in favor of public schools that certified teachers are the only ones qualified to teach students and that homeschooling is substandard education. Schools complain that they do not have the funds that they need to provide proper education and they loose funds for every child that is homeschooled. Several years back I read in the Washington Post that if every homeschool child were suddenly enrolled in public school that the schools would not be able accommodate the student population surge. Overcrowding is already an issue not to mention teacher shortages in some areas so how does forcing kids into the public school system help anyone? It would mean having to spend even more money to buy more text books, hire more teachers and build more schools. If the government can't adequately fund the education of the children in the school systems now, how do they intend to fund the education of more students since the money siphoned into the schools is proportional to the student population?

These arguments don't stop the harassment of homeschoolers. Visiting any online homescholing community you learn that school systems across the nation try to implement more regulations than written into state homeschooling laws. Usually this includes the submission of more paperwork in the form of more regular educational reports or lesson plans as well as impose unauthorized testing. Social Services are constantly responding to false complaints against homeschool families for educational neglect and will sometimes make up other stories just to get into the house to check out the original complaint when faced with the argument of violation of Forth Amendment rights and informing the parents that they have no rights in the matter of their investigations. Social workers take the stance that they work for the government and have therefore have the backing of the government to do whatever they want. A lot of times they get away with this because parents do not know their rights, the majority of lawyers are not well versed in educational law and are leery of taking on the county or state government. So the harassment continues, state and federal laws are broken by judges who are supposed to uphold the law and constitutional rights get walked on.