Please watch this issue carefully along with us.  Oklahoma is a prime target for homeschool regulation, and this interim study is building a case against parents to remove our homeschool liberties.  Learn what you can to help do here.

Points of Interest in the Interim Study

This study has several prominent themes. Check out our position on each argument by reading our responses below.

Here are the main problems with the study.

The Laws Are Already in Place

Homeschool regulations are unnecessary because education status is not the issue. This is about child welfare and neglect, and Oklahoma already has law regarding this. See our page on Truancy and Educational Neglect Hiding as Home Education. Kevin Boden, an attorney with Homeschool Legal Defense Association, gave an interview called Defending Parental Rights in which he discusses this issue. And Oklahoma already has a mandatory reporting law §10A-1-2-101-B-1:

Every person having reason to believe that a child under the age of eighteen (18) years is a victim of abuse or neglect shall report the matter immediately to the Department of Human Services.

§10A-1-2-101-B-1

Is it the government’s responsibility to monitor certain people groups in order to keep them from committing crimes? The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) comments on this type of government control over home education:

Things such as state-mandated testing and curriculum plans do not stop public school teachers, coaches, and administrators, public school parents, private school parents, or homeschool parents from sometimes harming children. It is possible that state-forced random and unannounced visits once per month of all homes with children in the United States might make a difference but this would then not be the United States.

NHERI

Gaining Credibility with the Right Theme

One reason for this study is to gain credibility for a future bill.  A previous bill that Swope introduced, HB 4130, had similar language and died.  The theme of that bill was “deprived children.” Since that language didn’t have any movement, possibly a more dangerous idea, abuse and neglect, will grab the public’s attention.

In an effort to gather support, opponents of homeschooling are trying to frame the issue to make it look like a lack of regulation is causing children to slip through the cracks.  They try to make emotional appeals to the idea that placing regulations will be worth it “if we can save just one child.”  However, such emotional rhetoric can be used to justify almost any breach of freedom and liberty.

If a bill of this sort were to pass, it could provide the public school system with more numbers through enrollment, which in turn would lead to more funding for them from the government.  To summarize, credibility leads to dollars.

Truancy or Homeschooling?

The initial focus of this study is on truancy because it is a word that has some emotion behind it. Truancy is a problem in Oklahoma public schools, and now, post-covid, it is even more prominent. 

The claim is that when parents of truant children feel the pressure of social services, many of them unenroll their children to avoid further encounters with the public school system and declare they are homeschooling.   

The problem with this claim is that once a child is truant, the public school system should contact social services. Once social services are involved, the children are indefinitely under the accountability of social services until their case is rectified, whether they remain in the public school system or not.  Truant children whose case is not seen by social services are only accountable to the public school system.  If the school does not follow up, the children are left with no accountability.  This is not a homeschooling issue.  This is a child welfare issue.

Regulation of homeschoolers will not solve the truancy problem.  Abusive parents who are elusive to the government school system when their children are enrolled will continue to be elusive when they pull their children out of the system.  They will either find more creative ways to hide, or they will move.  Government control is not a guarantee that we can root out the problem of abuse and neglect.  Regulation will only punish homeschoolers who are educating their children appropriately. 

Children Are Slipping Through the Cracks

Every one of us would help an abused child break out of their abusive environment if we were aware of the abuse.  Every day, teachers are present with children who are being abused at home AND at school. They greatly desire to help these children, but abuse is hard to recognize, and most children don’t report their abuse.  Children slip through the cracks every day, all while sitting in a state-run school.

Abused children are passing teachers in the hallways every day.  If the government cannot support the children that are directly under their supervision, even contributing to their abuse1, why do they think that expanding their reach into the homeschool arena will lead to less abuse when they themselves are a contributing factor?

Even if we place all Oklahoma children in public school, the fact is that children still go home every day and are under their parents’ control. The problem is not homeschooling and will not be solved by forcing regulations on a class of people who are at-home educators. The problem is that there are some children who are in crisis situations while they are at home, whether enrolled in school or not.

If We Can Save Just One Child…

The study is operating on an argument that if we can save just one child, legislation like this that affects all homeschoolers would be worth it. This is called the “save one life” fallacy, in which there is a focus on a potential gain in one area but a complete disregard for losses and downsides in all other areas. 

For example, in an article by Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan, the authors give an example of an overloaded truck that crashed, killing 14.  The reason for the crash was unknown, not due to alcohol, another vehicle, or weather. The solution is to lower the speed limit to five miles per hour, which would certainly save one life. They go on to give examples of the negative impact legislation like that would have, like lawbreaking and road rage, and that the losses would outweigh the gains and could potentially create more loss of life. 

If the losses in the Swope study affected her and her presenters, this study wouldn’t exist.  But since homeschoolers are a small class of people, we are an easy target. The regulations mentioned in the study, like forced enrollment, oversight by state officials, background checks, and home visits by social services, would permeate to all homeschoolers and would not be targeted at abusive families. If legislation places these mandates upon homeschool families, it would distinguish them from public school families by not mandating all public school families to submit to background checks and home visits in the same way.

We believe homeschooling saves lives every day, keeping America’s children safe from bullying behavior, threats of violence, and indoctrination by social agendas and harmful humanistic ideologies. These public school issues induce fear, emotional unrest, depression, or worse, and often lead families to remove their children from the system.

Oversight of “Our Children”

Throughout the presentation, the phrase “our children” was used to refer to all students, whether public schooled or homeschooled. We at HSOK believe that children are individual persons with rights and specific needs distinctive to themselves. We also believe that parents have a fundamental responsibility to raise these individuals in a loving, caring environment and to provide them with opportunities to grow and thrive mentally, physically, and emotionally.

The government has a notion, though, that children are the responsibility of the state and that state guardianship is necessary for a functioning society. This belief only encompasses the realm of education. When it comes to child misconduct and juvenile delinquency in their schools, the state falls back on the parents or even the local authorities. Considering how much time per classroom hour is devoted to actual education as opposed to the percentage of classroom time teachers place on behavioral management, the government education system is severely limited in its control.

Since the government is so limited, we must consider why this study is being done. Could it be that the state, which has suffered financially as a result of thousands exiting the public school system, is looking for a way to recover funds? If they are able to force homeschoolers to enroll, the state would then have more numbers and could receive funding in the districts. Could it be, also, that the platform for children’s safety is such an engaging issue that legislators see it as a means of climbing a ladder? If the legislators are successful in gaining funds for the state, they will surely make a name for themselves but at the cost of parental rights and of children subjected to negative interactions with lawmakers and enforcers.

Summary

Giving in to government regulations over homeschooling will not solve the problems of child abuse and neglect. This is a child welfare issue and not an education issue. Oklahoma already has laws concerning abuse and neglect so we should not waste time and money on laws that discriminate against homeschoolers. Parents who pull their children from public school or who are already homeschooling are being held as guilty until proven innocent in this study. This is not the way our government is meant to be used, to attack a people group who are intent on giving their children an excellent education above the standard of the state.

Homeschooling in Oklahoma is successful because of the tremendous freedom that it allows for parents.  People homeschool for various reasons, but frequently, they feel that the government-run schools are actively causing problems for their children.  Bringing homeschooling families under state bureaucracy is not merely an inconvenience for them but could actively reintroduce the same harms into their lives that they are trying to escape.

Please engage in polite and frequent conversation with your legislators regarding this issue. Unfortunately, there are some very loud voices even within homeschooling that support this type of legislation. They are willing to open the door to regulation without understanding the consequences. Homeschool Oklahoma is against any regulation that hinders the rights of parents to direct the education of their children as they see fit.

Further Reading

If you would like to watch the video of this interim study, check it out here. For further reading, check out Jonathan Small’s article entitled Swope, Strom Bills are an Attack on Parents. HB 4130 has died, but based on Swope’s interim study, we believe it may be back in a different package. Other states are dealing with this same issue. See what Michigan is dealing with in the article Michigan Home-schooling Families Push Back against Talk of a Required Registry.

Footnotes

1. Oklahoma Department of Education’s Child Abuse pdf states, “Rates of child sexual abuse and assault at schools are on the rise.” This not only suggests but confirms that the public school system in Oklahoma is aware of abuse and assault within its doors. https://sde.ok.gov/sites/default/files/Child%20Abuse%20Prevention.docx.pdf↩