Your comment on the Akron Beacon-Journal series on home schooling mystified and disappointed me. It's not that we merely disagree about need for regulating home schooling. It's that you are spectacularly wrong to criticize the series in light of the very principles you allege to champion in education.
You write: "The Akron Beacon-Journal has this week been running a series on home schooling that in years of biased reporting on education may just take the cake." And you illustrate this with a hokey exercise about trying to infer evidence about public school teachers from a Google search on "teacher."
But this is exactly the point about home schooling, a point the series makes over and over again: We have almost no good data on the academic performance of home schoolers because every analysis is taken from a biased sample. The overwhelming majority of studies on home schooling are done by advocacy organizations. And home schoolers famously resist even the most moderate attempts to regulate their efforts. Register their children as being home schooled? No way, that would be undue government interference!
As for the scare headlines? Well, it is factually true that home schooling laws as they now stand in most places permit racist parents to set up a curriculum of racism in the home.
Does this mean that home schooling should be banned? No. Does it mean that it ought to be heavily regulated? Not even that. But clearly, the Beacon-Journal teaches us that we need to know a lot more about what happens in home schools.
Consider this entire matter just from your own perspective. This week the Fordham Foundation announced its prizes for Excellence in Education. You say that you selected the winners with the following criteria in mind:
- Parents should have the right to select among a variety of high-quality schools for their children;
- All students, teachers, and schools can meet high standards, with the help of results-oriented accountability systems informed by rigorous assessments;
- Every school should deliver a content-rich curriculum taught by knowledgeable teachers; and
- Schools must serve first the educational needs of children, not the interests of institutions or adults.
Is it really the position of the Fordham Foundation that totally unregulated home schooling consistently delivers a content-rich curriculum taught by knowledgeable teachers; that all home schools first serve the educational needs of children and not parents; that all home schools meet high standards? Come on. Let's get real.
Rob Reich
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Stanford University