Читать книгу The Homeschool Choice - Kate Henley Averett - Страница 13

In many ways, Texas is an ideal place to study homeschooling. Despite its reputation as a deeply conservative state, Texas is, in fact, a large, diverse state with a wide range of political perspectives represented. While there is a massive religious infrastructure in place in Texas (as in much of the United States) to support homeschooling, there are also plenty of resources available to support nonreligious homeschoolers. In fact, I learned during this research that some consider the capital city of Austin to be one of the epicenters of progressive, “alternative” education in the United States—a trend that includes “unschooling,” or child-led homeschooling.

Texas is also a great place to study homeschooling because it is relatively easy to homeschool in the state. Regulation of home education in the United States—like regulation of education in general—occurs at the state and local levels.28 There is a great deal of variation in homeschooling regulations across different states.29 Currently, Texas is considered one of the least restrictive states in the United States in which to homeschool, with the Home School Legal Defense Association, a conservative homeschool advocacy group, calling Texas “a model state in upholding parental rights.”30 The Texas courts have ruled (and the Texas Supreme Court has unanimously upheld this ruling) that homeschools in the state of Texas are considered private schools, and thus are subject to the same (lack of) regulation as any other private school in the state.31 If a parent in Texas wants to homeschool, they simply need to withdraw their child from school with a note explaining that they will be homeschooling—or, if the child has not started school yet, they simply do not need to enroll the child.

Because these structural constraints on homeschooling vary by state, Texas serves as an ideal case for studying parents’ motivations for homeschooling. Extrapolating from national numbers, I estimate that the number of homeschooled children in Texas could exceed two hundred thousand—and I suspect the number is actually much higher.32 With Texas having far fewer hoops for parents to jump through to withdraw a child from public school than most other states, and a lack of strict curriculum requirements or testing, it would make sense that parents who are considering homeschooling in Texas may be more likely to actually begin homeschooling than parents considering homeschooling in other states. Thus, Texas is an ideal location for this study because there is a wide variation in parents’ motivations to homeschool, including those whose motivations are not based on strong ideological or religious commitments.