We need a better framework for homeschool rights

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

This April, Illinois State Representative Terra Costa-Howard received an anonymous death threat: “If we have to break the 6th Commandment, so be it. God said ‘Do Not Kill,’ but also said ‘Smite thine enemy.’ We’re watching ….” The threatening letter, postmarked in Kearny, NJ, came in response to Costa-Howard’s Homeschool Act, which sought to bring Illinois’ homeschool regulations in line with other states nationwide.

Why did Illinois draw national attention for a bill that simply copies regulations from other states? The answer lies in the history of homeschooling in the United States. For most of the 20th century, homeschooling was illegal. Today, it’s legal in all 50 states, thanks to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

As the only national organization devoted to homeschooling, the HSLDA wields outsize influence over state and federal homeschool laws. Much of this influence stems from its founder, Michael Farris. After creating the HSLDA, Farris founded Patrick Henry College, ParentalRights.org, and became CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Through Farris, the HSLDA has access to incredible power in Washington—and they use it. Why did Concerned Women for America send out a misleading call to action about Illinois’ Homeschool Act? They were just helping out Michael Farris, their chief counsel and lobbyist from the 1980s.

Why does this matter? Because the HSLDA is—and always has been—a Christian Nationalist enterprise.

Protestations about freedom and liberty aside, homeschooling is a useful tool for authoritarianism. US homeschool laws are built on a foundation of parental rights because the HSLDA’s theological and political system views children as property.

In the early days of homeschooling, most families aligned politically and theologically with the HSLDA, and the organization was more transparent about its fundamentalist Christian views. Homeschool alumni from this generation recount how the sound of a doorbell caused us panic attacks because the HSLDA taught our parents to fear the government and its representatives.

The HSLDA is notorious in my generation of homeschool alumni for its exclusionary tactics. Still, new homeschoolers are often unaware that the HSLDA’s advocacy is a major reason that homeschoolers are viewed as fanatical and isolationist. While many homeschooling families still cite religious reasons for homeschooling, the homeschool community has grown more diverse and less likely to interact with the HSLDA unless there’s a fight in their state.

The Christian Nationalist influences in the HSLDA aren’t confined to Michael Farris, though many of his organizations are listed as contributors or advisors for Project 2025. In hearings and demonstrations this spring, Illinois homeschooling families were accompanied by Will Estrada, HSLDA’s senior counsel and Project 2025 contributor.

Project 2025 is simply the HSLDA’s most prominent side-project. For more than a decade, Farris and the HSLDA have been powerful voices against the US ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Their goal is a regulation-free context in which parents have the liberty to educate their children as they wish—even if that “education” looks like physical and sexual abuse, educational neglect, and other crimes. The homeschool alumni who contributed an amicus brief for Mahmoud v. Taylor demonstrate what happens when parents have a blank check to deny their children access to education.

The belief that parents should have absolute authority over children informed the HSLDA’s flip-flop on a homeschooling bill in West Virginia this spring. The bill was set to eliminate some of the state’s current protections for homeschooled children, and the HSLDA supported the legislation. Legislators later added a child abuse exception because of the 2018 murder of 8-year-old Raylee Browning, who was tortured and killed by caregivers who withdrew her from school to homeschool her.

With the new exception, caregivers under active investigation for child abuse or neglect would be prohibited from homeschooling children in West Virginia. The HSLDA predictably announced it no longer supported the legislation because it advocates for parents to be able to homeschool their children under all circumstances, even if parents are under active investigation for child abuse.

The HSLDA may seem like a powerful ally to regulation-averse parents. The HSLDA’s parental-rights framework for homeschooling legislation has been successful, and they can tap groups like Americans for Prosperity when Illinois homeschoolers need to pay for buses to Springfield. But those resources come with a hidden cost.

BIPOC homeschoolers have legitimate concerns about interactions with the child welfare system, and HSLDA has fanned those flames to the point where a Black homeschooling mom in Illinois went on television and equated the Homeschool Act with slavery. Unfortunately, any short-term gains granted by the HSLDA will be undercut by the Christian Nationalist goal of creating a society where white Christians rule over everyone else. An exposé of Colin and Nancy Campbell’s Liberian adoption scheme illuminates how Black children fare in a world run by Christian Nationalist homeschoolers.

The HSLDA has spent four decades amassing power; it will be difficult to divest from its Christian Nationalist framework. But for the sake of our children and our country, we must. We must look to our BIPOC homeschooling neighbors who conceptualize homeschooling within a community framework, rather than a framework based on the nuclear family.

Homeschooling is not an individual liberty; every family’s education choices impact the wider community. The HSLDA knows this—they invest in homeschooling to bend the trajectory of our society toward Christian Nationalism. When we pit homeschooling families against those who choose public or private school, children suffer. Parents, you can support legislation that protects the rights of every child, not just the ones who are fortunate to live in your home.

We must disrupt the mindset that views children as property and consider homeschooling through the lens of children’s rights.

Our society struggles to see children as humans with full agency and rights; the HSLDA leverages that inequity for their benefit. The HSLDA declares that children do not belong to the state, and that is true. But children do not belong to their parents, either.

Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Homeschooling built on parental rights cannot tackle our nation’s systems of oppression; it will only lead to authoritarianism. Homeschooling has great potential to be a revolutionary experience for children, but we must flip the script for that to happen. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education says it best: Children have rights. Parents have responsibilities.