Left-wing states are always looking for the next way to oppress and limit homeschooling. Parents in Michigan are warning of the latest attempt to quash their freedom with ominous and obtrusive new regulations aimed at scaring parents away from taking their children out of government-run schools.
At issue is a new “registry” of homeschooling households that the Michigan State Board of Education is proposing, a plan that opponents say is just the first step toward more government intrusion in the education of their children in the home.
Even members of the board are not so sure about the idea of forcing homeschooling parents to register themselves, their homes and their children in a new government tracking program.
Republican trustee Tom McMillin, for one, said that the registry idea is “quite disturbing,” according to Michigan Capitol Confidential, a news website operated by the conservative think tank the Mackinac Center.
McMillin said the idea is hardly benign and is just a foot in the door to allow the state to eventually seek “unwarranted home entry” into the homes of homeschooling families. He also warned that such intrusions would have the color of law and if parents refused such entry, officials would be able to “barge in and bust the door down.”
Republican Board of Ed member Nikki Snyder also opposed the registry, saying, “Students have a constitutional right and reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Israel Wayne, vice president of the Michigan Christian Homeschool Network, joined in warning Michiganders that the state is gearing up to be more oppressive of homeschooling and to force children into the state’s dangerous public schools.
“There’s absolutely no benefit to (a registry.) I mean, it doesn’t help students academically. It doesn’t keep any student safe. It’s needless government red tape,” Wayne said, according to Bridge Michigan.
But Michael Rice, who was appointed as the state superintendent in 2019 by the Democrat-controlled Michigan State Board of Education, insisted in a letter to lawmakers that the goal is to ensure that students are afforded proper educational opportunities.
Do you (or would you) send your child to public school?
“There is a history in Michigan and across the nation that some students get no education,” the superintendent wrote in his letter in January, though he did not clarify what that meant, nor did he offer examples or statistics to back up his bald-faced assertion.
Ominously, Rice added that every child in Michigan needs an “identified educational setting.”
This line alone might tend to convey that Rice plans to further regulate what parents are allowed to teach and how they will be allowed to do it in their homeschooling classrooms.
With this letter in mind, McMillin told Michigan Capitol Confidential that “It’s going to go beyond registration. They’re either going to want to know exactly what’s being taught or want entry into the house. … Registration is the next step and is not the only step.”
Molly Macek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center, also warned that a simple registry is meaningless.
“A simple list of names with their form of schooling will do nothing to protect kids,” Macek said of Rice’s registry proposal. “If safety is the goal, then a registry is just the first step in regulating homeschooling. Whether these regulations include curriculum verifications, home checks or other requirements, they restrict the parents’ right to ‘determine and direct the care, teaching, and education of their children,’” she said, quoting from section 10 of the Revised School Code.
Macek added, “Simply put, a homeschool registry and any additional regulations would restrict families’ educational freedom. When parents choose to remove their kids from government schools to be educated outside the system, these kids are no longer under the government’s care.”
But the registry idea has powerful backers. Openly gay Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, for one, claims that the registry would prevent “child abuse.”
It’s always “for the children,” with these leftists, isn’t it?
“The homeschooling environment allowed abuse in the Flore home to go unnoticed; implementing monitoring mechanisms is crucial to ensure that all children, including those homeschooled, receive necessary protections,” she wrote on X in Dec.
The homeschooling environment allowed abuse in the Flore home to go unnoticed; implementing monitoring mechanisms is crucial to ensure that all children, including those homeschooled, receive necessary protections. https://t.co/zdgnkTOZ1X
— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) December 6, 2023
Michigan homeschooling parents are not currently required to make their children take proficiency tests, but a state law does require homeschoolers to teach a curriculum that includes reading, spelling, mathematics, science, history, civics, literature, writing and English grammar.
State data suggests that 150,000 kids in the Wolverine State are not registered in public or private schools. That does not mean they are all being homeschooled, as many in that category have simply dropped out of school altogether. But homeschoolers would be included in that number.
The detractors of this registry are likely correct. The left despises homeschooling, and this list of homeschooling parents is only being proposed so that Democrat-affiliated officials can identify homeschooling households solely for the purpose of pinning down where they are, so officials can move in and begin forcing them to toe the left’s line on “education.”
Meanwhile, government-operated schools in cities like Jackson, Detroit, Flint and other blue-led inner-city Michigan schools, are still failing miserably. Take the case of 11th graders in Detroit, for instance. In September of last year, Detroit schools were jubilant that they raised proficiency levels for their kids. Yet even the rise in proficiency was still dismal, The Center Square reported last year.
Reading and writing scores were only at 32.9 percent proficiency, and math was at a terrible 11.7 percent of grade-appropriate levels. Yet with horrendous stats like these, Democrat “education” czars in Michigan think they have a right to tell homeschoolers how to improve the education of kids? On what basis of efficacy do they base their case?
Democrats are not interested in educating kids. They only want a lock on the control of children to continue indoctrinating them, day in and day out, in left-wing ideology. Education is not really in the cards. Political control is what they really want. And homeschooling parents — who stand in the way of that all-encompassing control — are well aware of this fact.
