Home-schooling backlash expected

Stricter oversight might have found shackled kids in California

Just over a week after California officials found 13 siblings allegedly held captive and younger children apparently not missed by schools because they were being homeschooled, home-schooling advocates say they are bracing for calls for stricter oversight of the practice.

The advocates say they were horrified by accusations that the children’s parents kept them shackled in a filthy home in the Southern California city of Perris, and some said they support mandatory medical visits or regular academic assessments of home-schooled children.

But others contend moves to step up home-schooling controls in the name of exposing child abuse earlier could lead to overregulation and intrusion that punishes parents.

“Right now the biggest threat is that lawmakers might make a decision based on the emotion of the moment, rather than looking at the empirical evidence,” said Scott Woodruff, senior counsel with the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association. He said national organizations that track risk factors for child abuse, including the U.S. Commission to Eliminate Child Neglect and Fatalities, don’t list home-schooling among them.

One California lawmaker has floated the idea of requiring annual walkthroughs of home schools by state or county officials because of the case and “a number of legislators have expressed interest in doing something,” the Homeschool Association of California said in a statement.

In Watertown, Connecticut, Chemay Morales-james home-schools her 4- and 6-year-old children because she wasn’t comfortable with her local school options and says she worries that “things are going to change now.”

She rejected the notion that home-schooling hurts children’s socialization and said many homeschooled children, like hers, spend most of their time out and about in their communities.

“I’m hoping this is one of those things where it’s hot for the moment and then it dies down,” Morales-james said.