Help protect homeschool students in Illinois

A closer look at HB 2827

In 2003, my homeschooling parents assembled an educational portfolio for my college applications.

“We want to be the primary influences in our children’s lives,” they wrote in their philosophy of education statement. Photo pages of our homeschool musicals (we paid to have them color-printed!) featured prominently in the portfolio, but the remaining 20+ pages highlighted my K-12 homeschool academics. My parents used a literature-based curriculum, so they included a list of books I read in high school. I forget how many pages we devoted to the book list, but it was well over 1,000 books.

How did they manage to assemble all of this documentation? Well, I was homeschooled in New York. New York requires homeschooling parents to submit annual Individualized Home Instruction Plans (IHIPs) and quarterly reports. Because my parents were required to track my educational progress through IHIPs and standardized testing, I had the documentation I needed to apply to college.

As an archivist and a homeschool alumna, I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: documentation protects homeschooled students.

Yes, my parents were abusive. Yes, there were major gaps in my education. But New York’s homeschool laws provided a way for me to attend college and start filling in those gaps.

Right now, Illinois is considering the Homeschool Act (HB 2827). This bill is personal for me: not only did I live in Illinois for 5 years, but my friends and family in Illinois are both homeschool alumni and homeschool parents. I’ve seen considerable pushback on the bill from homeschooling parents and I wanted to understand their concerns, so I read the bill myself.

Here’s what I see in the bill, as a homeschool alumna. The Homeschool Act will:

• Require homeschooling families to submit an annual Homeschool Declaration Form.

  
  This allows IL to accurately account for all students in their state, not just the ones in public and private schools. This matters because lawmakers, parents, journalists, and researchers regularly make decisions based on incomplete information. How many homeschooled students are there? We don’t know. Are they stuck in a house with sex offenders? We don’t know. Documentation protects homeschooled students because it tells people that we exist.
  
  If a family fails to submit a declaration form, the children will be considered truant. The HSLDA says: “Homeschooling parents who fail to comply with H.B. 2827’s new mandates could face truancy charges, potentially resulting in jail time or having their children forcibly removed from home.” (emphasis mine)

  
  The HSLDA has spent decades terrifying parents with the myth that the government is going to rip children out of their homes. Who benefits from this kind of propaganda? Abusive parents. Here’s one homeschooled kid that I grew up with: ”My parents told us that if we told the truth, social workers would take us away and we would never see our family again and end up in homes where we weren't loved.”
  
  The only requirement that has any teeth is the declaration form. If you don’t fill out the form, the school district can consider your children truant. I think that’s a fair consequence.

• Require homeschooling families to maintain an educational portfolio.

  
  This is the part of the bill that upsets people the most, at least in my circle. Here’s what the portfolio is:
  

  "Educational portfolio" means a set of records and materials that document a child's educational progress during the preceding school year and includes, but is not limited to: (1) a log, which designates by title the curricular materials used; (2) samples of any writings, worksheets, workbooks, or creative materials used or developed by the child; and (3) the homeschool administrator's individualized assessment of the child's academic progress in each subject area of instruction.

  
  I’ve heard concerns that school districts will be approving or rejecting curriculum based on the portfolio and I just don’t see that in this bill. “Curricular materials” is a broad category that allows for all types of learning.

  HSLDA falsely claims that “The bill would permit local public school officials to demand to review samples of work by homeschooled students at any time and for any reason. This could entail parents and children being called into the school superintendent’s office for in-person interviews.”

  
  Most homeschooling families will never have to submit a portfolio. Based on my read, the only context in which schools may require a portfolio or parent’s high school diploma is when a family is already non-compliant with the homeschool declaration form.
  

• Require homeschooling parents to have a high school diploma or equivalent

  
  This ensures that parents have completed K-12 before they start teaching. I think this is woefully inadequate, but it’s a start.

• Ban parents convicted of sexual abuse crimes from homeschooling.

  
  This should be obvious, but it’s not. Utah is currently removing this very basic protection for children. I can tell them how that will turn out. New York does not require parents to meet a minimum standard to homeschool their children; parents who are convicted of child abuse are still allowed to homeschool. This means that a man from my childhood church who molested two of his toddlers still has 24/7 access to his homeschooled child victims. Many of my homeschooling peers could have been spared tremendous pain if New York had required them to have contact with mandated reporters.
  

• Create an equitable process for homeschooled students to participate in public school activities.
  
  New York didn’t allow us to participate in public school activities, but my siblings could enroll in choir when they were homeschooled in Wisconsin and it seemed like a great experience for them. Homeschooled students should have access to public school activities (the families are paying taxes!).

  
  The requirement to produce documentation for immunizations and health examinations protects both public school and homeschooled students. Many families will likely choose a religious exemption to the vaccination requirement, but creating incentives for health examinations is a critical protective measure. Again, let me quote one of my homeschool friends: “Numerous times throughout my childhood, my parents would cancel doctor's appointments because they didn't want them to see the bruises on me.”

When people make decisions that impact vulnerable homeschooled children, they rarely ask homeschool alumni for input. Many homeschooling parents are quick to say that their method of homeschooling produced wonderful, well-adjusted adults, but I want to hear from their children. When homeschool alumni reach 30 or 40, how do they reflect on the impact of homeschooling? What worked for them? What didn’t?

I’m 38 with a child of my own. As the oldest of nine children, I’ve observed decades of homeschooling in New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. I strongly disagree with the HSLDA’s zero-regulation approach. Yes, plenty of homeschooling parents are fantastic, but we do a disservice to children when we ignore the fact that parents are the leading actors in child abuse.

According to statistics from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), perpetrators of child abuse are most likely to be parents of the child. In 2023, 18,827 out of 23,081 perpetrators in the state of Illinois were a child’s parents. As anyone who deals with child abuse knows, that is *vastly* undercounting cases of abuse. Most homeschooled students never encounter a mandated reporter and their abuse goes unnoticed.

Documentation protects homeschooled students.

My assessment is unlikely to change the minds of parents who view children as arrows to be sharpened. But for homeschooling parents who enjoy homeschooling and want to help protect other homeschoolers, please listen to my experience.

I support HB 2827. I hope you’ll consider supporting it as well.