'Experts' know best, say homeschooling needs regulation, reform

A summit planned for this June at Harvard aims to discuss what it calls the "problems, politics, and prospects for reform" in homeschooling.

Supporters of homeschooling have concerns about the summit planned for June 18-19 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That may be due to the fact that these comments from organizer and Professor James Dwyer have gone viral:

"The state needs to be the ultimate guarantor of a child's well-being. There's just no alternative to that. The reason parent-child relationships exist is because the state confers legal parenthood on people through its paternity and maternity laws. It's the state that is empowering parents to do anything with children – to take them home, to have custody, and to make any kind of decisions about that." (Law professor James Dwyer, College of William & Mary)

The following excerpt from the summit website summarizes the objective of the gathering:

"The focus will be on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal or no oversight. Experts will lead conversations about the available empirical evidence, the current regulatory environment, proposals for legal reform, and strategies for effecting such reform."

Speaking on his radio program on Monday, American Family Association (AFA) attorney and homeschooling parent Abraham Hamilton III said one only needs to look at the guest list for the summit to see that this is not a pro-homeschooling event – or in the very least, something that is open to the idea of homeschooling in its present form.

"You have Dr. Rachel Coleman, who is the founder of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, and she's going to share her organization's views that homeschooling must be more firmly regulated by the government," said Hamilton.

"Then you have Samantha Field, also from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, who wrote an article called 'Meet HSLDA, the most powerful religious right lobby you never heard of' – and [who] claims the Home School Legal Defense Association has fomented a culture of suspicion and wild conspiracy theories that may put children in danger."

Also scheduled to appear at the June summit: Carmen Longoria Green, litigation counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"She wrote in Georgetown Law Review that the current homeschool environment is massively deregulated," Hamilton continued. "She goes on to suggest that states should set up a process where homeschool students could petition a judge to force their parents to send them to public school!"

Also speaking Monday – on the "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" radio program – attorney Michael Donnelly of Home School Legal Defense Association said homeschooling works, and that if critics looked at the research they'd know the "facts."

"Homeschool kids do at least as well, and a lot of research shows that they do better academically," said Donnelly.

And as Donnelly explained, homeschool students also do fine socially.

"They grow up, they join the military, they have jobs, careers, families," he continued. "They're just like regular Americans except that they were taught at home by mom; and in fact, some research has shown that over 85, 90 percent of people who are homeschooled and graduated from homeschooling plan to homeschool their own kids."

Related article from HSLDA:
Harvard Summit to Discuss Regulating Homeschooling

Related article from a homeschooled Harvard graduate:
I excelled at Harvard because I was taught to love learning