Coalition for Responsible Home Education
This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)
Mission
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education has a mission to protect child's rights in homeschooled settings. However, homeschoolers often call the CRHE a wolf in sheep's clothing. The Coalition works to promote good homeschooling practices. However, Christian homeschoolers feel that the CRHE calls for excessive oversight.
The mission of CRHE is noble:
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education empowers homeschooled children by educating the public and advocating for child-centered, evidence-based policy and practices for families and professionals
Restrictive homeschooling
The CRHE website contains a great deal of materials that seem to paint homeschooling in a discouraging light. For example, in a text called Reactionary Homeschooling, Dr. Rachel Coleman writes:
We receive questions from individuals planning in advance to homeschool […] we encourage these parents to consider and evaluate all available options, including the local public schools […] Public school teachers and administrators are always looking for ways to make education better […] Your children are not destined to repeat your experience […] you should give your local school district a look […] Place more weight on the experiences of parents whose children attend the school than on its reputation in the wider community, and remember that diversity enhances children’s experiences
The above does not sound like an encouragement to homeschool. It sounds like a public school propaganda coached in nice words. Only the ending of the text is on the mark: "Your child should have input in this decision". If children truly had their say, very few would opt for schooling as opposed to free learning. All they need is the taste of the two.
Criticism
Christian homeschoolers often denounce the Coalition. Shelly Sangrey, who is a dedicated conservative homeschooling mom of 11, wrote angrily in her blog: The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a leftist, anti-homeschooling organization that misleads people into believing they’re a legitimate homeschool non-profit, to back up their claims.
The critics may fail to notice that the Coalition was born from concerns of its founders over child abuse in homeschooled families. The root of the evil might not be the ill intent, but a degree of ignorance about what constitutes effective learning.
Website
The skepticism and the cautious approach to homeschooling add to the credibility of success reports at the CRHE site. For a nice example see the report by Arielle G.. This optimistic narrative may be a bit intimidating for prospective homeschoolers as it really reads like "how to homeschool your child for the Ivy League".
The CRHE website contains a great deal of interesting statistics, and research reports. However, it does not really look like a site whose mission is to help increase the ranks of children free to learn. The mere fact of labelling homeschooling as a radical alternative to the school environment paints it as unacceptable to those who like to live lives free of social pressure.
Well-intended limits on who can homeschool are also misguided:
Homeschool parents may teach students of any grade level and cannot be expected to be capable of teaching at a grade level above that which they themselves have completed. Completing a secondary education ensures the parents value education in their own lives
The proposed restriction shows that the CRHE does not understand the mechanics of free learning in the belief that kids need supervisors and are too dumb to self-educate.
Moreover, if future society is an unschooled society, the weight of diplomas and certificated will be diminished.
Verdict
In my eyes, the mission of CRHE would better be characterized as a warning: responsible homeschooling is hard. In reality, the only truly hard part of free learning is for parents to accept child autonomy, which goes well beyond stereotypes hammered into our heads by decades of compulsory schooling. Other than that, the true happy picture of free learning is missing from the CRHE site. It should state clearly on its front page: