Conversation, at least, needed to ensure adequate safety, education of home-schooled students

State Rep. Terra Costa Howard of Glen Ellyn is calling for stronger home-school laws following reporting about the state’s lax oversight.
Capitol News Illinois File Photo

Given past legislative experience in Illinois over simply raising the subject of home-school regulation, state Rep. Terra Costa Howard is taking a bold step in calling for new studies of the state’s policies. She deserves some support.

Costa Howard, a Glen Ellyn Democrat, is chair of the House Adoption and Child Welfare Committee. In an interview with Capitol News Illinois this week, she expressed understandable concern about Illinois’ home-school policy following a joint CNI/ProPublica report last June that suggested serious, sometimes dangerous shortcomings in some home-school settings.

The CNI/ProPublica report found that while Illinois’ home-school policy requires that students get an education equivalent to what is taught in public schools, it establishes almost no measures for monitoring and evaluating that objective. Moreover, the report found, some children supposedly being home-schooled have been dangerously neglected or physically abused, with little coordination with the Department of Children and Family Services to protect them.

Many home-schooling families provide rigorous instruction and undertake the demands of the process because they consider public education inadequate or cannot find suitable private-school opportunities. That is admirable. Furthermore, home-school advocates rightly respond that perhaps-isolated cases of inadequacy or even tragic abuse should not impugn the entire system.

But what about the children who fall through the cracks? What systems exist to protect them?

Under the state’s current system, we can’t even know how many of them there may be. According to the CNI/ProPublica reporting, state authorities cannot compel proof of teaching methods, attendance, curriculum or testing outcomes. Local authorities investigating potential cases of truancy are virtually stymied if families say a child is being home-schooled. Parents aren’t even required to notify authorities if they remove their kids from school.

As Costa Howard told CNI in an interview, “We need to know these kids exist.”

Attempts to strengthen oversight of home-school cases have rarely gotten far in Illinois. More than a decade ago, former truant officer Michael Mobley offered proposals to verify whether home-schooled children are meeting the state’s requirement, but was greeted with protests from advocates and could not muster much support from state officials.

“Home schooling is the third rail of politics in Illinois …” he told CNI. “I can tell you firsthand that any legislative attempt to regulate home schooling will be met with swift and certain opposition.”

Maybe so. That is not necessarily bad. The political system ought to ensure that supporters and opponents alike are heard and respected, and home-school advocates should be part of any deeper study the state undertakes. But their fear of unnecessary or overly rigorous regulations ought not automatically prohibit examination to ensure, that, as surely all serious home-school advocates concur, systems are in place to identify and protect children who are not getting the education they require or who are being abused or neglected at home by parents taking advantage of lax oversight.

A CNI report this week said Costa Howard plans to convene meetings on the subject between state child welfare and education officials. These are conversations worth having, and, more important, some children’s futures and some children’s safety could be at risk if officials and all home-school interests are not having them.