Read on Twitter
One of my hopes is that post-Covid, we can have a serious conversation about homeschooling and the need to better regulate it to ensure that kids are (a) safe, and (b) getting the educations to which they are entitled. https://twitter.com/olgakhazan/status/1295362325302726657
The takeaway right now seems to be "homeschooling is so hard, I'm barely educating my kids, wow let's applaud homeschooling parents!" not "Hmmm... maybe lots of homeschooling parents are making this work, but maybe lots of them also aren't educating their kids very well?"
Homeschooling has also been a cover for serious child abuse and neglect - pull a kid out of school and they don't have safe adults to talk to. Responsible homeschoolers know this, which is why they don't object to basic welfare checks. But many advocate against basic protections.
There's a deep tension on the rights of children vs. the rights of adults to have full control over their children, and on the right (and esp among Evangelicals) there is strong resistance to the idea that children have any rights at all (fertilized eggs, on the other hand...)
In my view (and the view of, say, international treaties on the rights of children), a child has a basic right to education and a basic right to be free from bodily harm, regardless of what that child's parents believe. Yet in the US we do not afford that to many of our children.
Parents should absolutely be able to homeschool their children when that's in the best interest of a child -- and sometimes it truly is. But there need to be basic educational standards and checks to ensure homeschooled kids are learning and that they're safe.
