Free Republic

The Smith family in DeWitt has endured more than its share of challenging circumstances. But having access to an online charter school has been a great help. During a single week in 2007, Sandy Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer and her son Andrew was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. After Andrew passed away at eight years old, the Smiths enrolled their two surviving children in a cyber school. “We thought this would be a great opportunity, a great fit for us, because we could take it with us wherever we were going, we would have teachers involved, and we’d...

Homeschooling families throughout the nation are voicing opposition to a Republican-sponsored school choice bill that they say will ultimately result in regulation of homeschooling in the United States. Many parents who homeschool their children, as well as their numerous local and national homeschooling organizations, are protesting the bill, introduced by Iowa Rep. Steve King (R), and calling upon the members of Congress who are its sponsors to “leave homeschooling families alone.” School vouchers created by H.R. 610, the Choices in Education Act of 2017, “would be a slippery slope toward more federal involvement and control in homeschooling,” asserts William Estrada,...

In a tizzy after Betsy DeVos was confirmed as President Trump’s Sec. of Education, liberals on Twitter started considering the merits of homeschooling for the first time. The irony of invoking the freedom to choose where their kids go to school as a way to protest a pro-school choice Sec. of Education seemed lost on them. {..snip..}

[A few words about America’s two biggest parasites--] if you’ve driven on southern interstates, you know kudzu. It’s that leafy vine that can cover the tallest trees. Finally, motorists see nothing but kudzu, which has earned the nickname, “The vine that ate the South.” Kudzu envelops everything and eventually destroys everything. In short, kudzu is exactly like Sight-Words. Kudzu, indigenous to Japan, was touted as an ornamental shade plant at US expositions in 1876 and 1883. During the 20th century, government agencies promoted kudzu as cattle feed. The Department of Agriculture also recommended “kudzu to help control erosion of slopes...

The teen accused of shooting two students and a teacher at a South Carolina elementary school on Wednesday reportedly was expelled from middle school last year for showing up with a hatchet. A family friend of the suspected shooter told WSPA the 14-year-old was being home-schooled after the hatchet incident. The alleged shooter had no known connection to Townville Elementary, where he was eventually taken into custody. He had been

"I worry that in a lot of cases students who are homeschooled are not getting the kind of the breadth of instruction experience they would get in school, they're also not getting the opportunity to build relationships with peers unless their parents are very intentional about it," said Education Secretary John B. King Jr. "And they're often not getting those relationships with teachers and mentors other than their parents. I do worry whether home school students are getting the range of opportunities we hope for for all kids," he said slamming the system.

Homeschool families in Clinton County, Kentucky, were surprised to see themselves mentioned in their local paper as a topic of discussion during the recent school board meeting. On May 18, the Clinton County News reported that local school officials intend to conduct random audits of area homeschool families this summer because they want to “ensure that all children in our county are getting a rigorous and effective education.” Home School Legal Defense Association opposes any such audits as unconstitutional. We are also troubled by what appears to be the underlying motivation for this proposed meddling by school officials: money. During...

NEWTOWN - A proposal to create detailed profiles of students’ personal lives as part of a plan to better manage mental health issues in the classroom might sound like a transgression of the school district’s authority. But in the post-Sandy Hook world, the danger is not that privacy rights will be sidestepped by school districts looking to create comprehensive diagnostic pictures of students with special needs, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said. “There would only be a danger if we didn’t do that,” he said. “The question needs to be: ‘If the school district doesn’t take this on, how do we forge...

I was homeschooled from the 1st through 12th grades and never once desired to go to the government schools. At the time, I couldn’t imagine being confined to what looked like a prison system — bells telling me where to go, cutting short the time I wanted to spend on certain subjects; standing in line to have food dumped on a tray for me to eat; wearing the same clothes as everyone else; and truant officers hunting me down if I went rogue! None of that appealed to me. I was very happy with the freedom that homeschooling provided. Not...

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children. They wanted to live in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs. The Romeikes were initially given asylum, but the Obama administration objected – claiming that German laws that outlaw homeschooling do not constitute persecution.

ORLANDO, Fla. - Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz signed a pledge to kill Common Core if elected.Cruz was the only one of 14 Republican presidential primary candidates at the Florida Sunshine Summit - a conservative rally put on by the state's Republican Party - to vow, in writing, to oppose any federal efforts to mandate, impose or influence standards assessments or curriculum across the country, Sunshine State News reports."As the Republican Party of Florida begins its Sunshine Summit, Senator Cruz's pledge provides needed leadership on the critical issue of education that so impacts the many residents and students of the State...

A number of homeschool parents in Florida have been ordered by a public school district to register their children in classes within three days or face “criminal prosecution” under state law. A meeting within the next week likely will determine whether school officials will face a lawsuit in response to the threat. The issue is being addressed by the Home School Legal Defense Association, which said its members in the Santa Rosa County School District received letters demanding information that parents are not required to provide under state law. The information included Social Security number, race and grade level. The...

Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives. Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears next week that could have broad implications on the nation's booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ. At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one's own children stop...

I just need general advice and links to resources on home schooling. I'm finding the topic a little daunting because I don't know where to begin. My kid is bright and being bullied relentlessly at school. Not by just the kids, but also staff. Admin do nothing because of nepotism, etc. He's 8th grade level, now. I'll leave this here and catch up later to replies. I know there are many FReepers here who home school and would appreciate feedback. I just don't know where to begin and I'm terribly disorganized. I'll make dinner and BBL. Thanks!

Nothing really changed after a New Jersey state social worker banged on Christopher and Nicole Zimmer’s front door, and yet everything was different. Over the next two hours, the social worker quizzed their 15-year-old son, Chris, including questions on whether his parents fought or did drugs. She wanted to see his homeschool curriculum. She wanted to inspect their firearms. She told the Zimmers to sign papers agreeing to turn over their son’s medical records. And then she left, and the Zimmers never saw her again. But they can’t let it go. They can’t erase the memory of what it felt...

The left-leaning nonprofit ProPublica recently ran an article on home schooling that opened by relating an anecdote from 2003. It tells of a 19-year-old man in New Jersey who weighed just 45 pounds and was found rummaging through a neighbor’s garbage. The explanation for how such a thing could happen is delivered by a state politician who says, “I was told it was because he was homeschooled.” The story, co-published on the liberal Slate.com, then quotes Ellen Heinitz, who is the legislative director for a Democratic state representative from Detroit, about her experience with a national homeschooling lobbying group called...

Many public primary and secondary schools are dangerous places. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2012, there were about 749,200 violent assaults on students. In the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year. In Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. Each year, roughly...

LONDON, August 8, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A former beauty queen now working as a sexologist is turning heads in Britain after her just-aired TV special, Sex in Class, featured her leading a group of Lancashire teens in rewriting a script for a porn movie. For the program, Goedele Liekens went into homes as well as classrooms to talk sex with parents and their offspring. Liekens took 13 mid-teens, girls and boys, from Hollins Technology College, through a crash course in sex, with students at one point attempting to make art inspired by female reproductive organs. The TV special was intended to promote the idea...

strong>Angela Wade’s children hadn’t reached school age yet, so she had given little thought to where, or how, they’d be educated. But from the moment she set foot in her local public school—to vote on Election Day—she knew that she wouldn’t be sending her kids there. It wasn’t that the academics weren’t up to snuff or that the Astoria, Queens, elementary school suffered from a bad reputation. But what she saw in the hallways and on the cafeteria walls surprised this former New York City public school teacher with an education degree from NYU. “There were licensed characters painted on...

The National Education Association has launched an attack on the practice of homeschooling, and one leading education expert is not taking it lying down. “The National Education Association’s radical attacks on constitutionally protected liberties and homeschooling families in particular are outrageous and should be vehemently denounced by every real educator and every real American,” internationalist journalist and educator Alex Newman declared. The NEA’s 2014-2015 resolution on homeschooling begins like this: “The National Education Association believes that home schooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience.” Freelance writer Patrice Lewis, who homeschools her children,...