January 28, 2015 by Izzy Lyman
Whether it’s winning a Heisman Trophy, being a Hollywood A-lister, serving in Congress, winning the Miss America crown, or outscoring their conventionally-schooled peers on standardized tests, home-schoolers continue to shine in big ways.
The National Home Education Research Institute reports that this educational choice is becoming increasingly popular with minorities as 15 percent of home-schooling families are now non-white/non-Hispanic.
Despite the fact that the over two million students who eschew the brick-and-mortar educational model also save taxpayers billions of their dollars, shocking episodes of government overreach still haunt the movement.
Consider three examples which range from the ridiculous to the horrifying.
The Goochland County School Board of Virginia enacted a policy, in 2013, to require teenage homeschoolers (ages 14 and up), asking for a religious exemption from compulsory attendance laws, to provide a statement about their faith. Due to the public outcry regarding the mandate, the Board recently repealed the policy.
In Garland County, Ark., seven of the homeschooled Stanley children, ages 4 to 16, were removed from their home, earlier this month, by a phalanx of law enforcement officials brandishing a search warrant on a mission to locate a “miracle” mineralsupplement that purifies water. The Garland County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO) decided that the supplement, mostly used in the Stanley garden, posed a threat to the children’s wellbeing.
Family friend Todd Deloach told Watchdog Arena, “This is a good family. Maybe the best people I have ever met.”The GCSO, however, won’t comment as to why the children were actually taken from parents Hal and Michelle Stanley. A press release vaguely stated “that there were a number of different factors and investigators felt they had no choice but to intervene in the best interest of the minor children.”
In November, the Home School Legal Defense Association filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Laura and Jason Hagan, former residents of Nodaway County, Mo.. The Hagans say that sheriff department’s officers entered their house, in 2011, without a search warrant and tasered and pepper sprayed them.
The complaint also alleges that Mrs. Hagan was slapped by one of the officers, while Mr. Hagan was kicked. Although the initial child endangerment charges against the couple were dropped, it took the Hagans several months to regain full legal custody of their three children. The aggressive investigation came about due to a complaint by a social worker that the Hagan home was “messy.”
Perhaps the lesson to be gleaned from the Alice in Wonderland realm of child welfare is best expressed by Tim Lambert of the Texas Home School Coalition: “The home-school community must be involved in the political process, educating elected officials who will oppose any effort by the legislature to regulate homeschooling.”
original article: Government overreach still tormenting home-school movement
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