Do you have to be a certified teacher to teach your own children at home? Today, on Home School Heartbeat, Michael Farris, president of Home School Legal Defense Association, tells us that requirements for home schooling parents vary state by state.
Mike:
Most people assume that the law limits the right to home school to those parents who are qualified to teach. In fact, in only 15 states is the right to home school conditioned upon teacher qualification in any significant degree. In 3 states—California, Kansas, and New York—parents are required to be competent, but there is no legal definition of that term, which yields a great deal of freedom. In 9 states parents must have a high school diploma or a GED to be allowed to home school. Critically, no state requires a college education or teacher certification as the ironclad rule for home schooling.
Why are the states been so lenient on the issue of parental qualifications? The answer is that home schoolers have been able to demonstrate in both studies and voluminous personal testimonies that any parent, regardless of their educational background can successfully deliver an excellent academic education to their children. The purported intent of an education requirement on parents would be to assure excellence. Home schoolers have been able to demonstrate that one-on-one instruction by parents with no special training is superior to group instruction by professional teachers.
For once in modern America our lawmakers have looked at the evidence of home education and followed the course of freedom, because freedom works.
I’m Michael Farris.
Home School Heartbeat, with Mike Farris, is a production of the Home School Legal Defense Association and is brought to you by the Home School channel at Crosswalk.com. Check out the Home School channel today at Crosswalk.com. That’s www.crosswalk.com.
