by Alex Newman, Liberty Sentinel:
Multiple Democrat states are targeting homeschooling families with draconian new laws and policies, raising alarm among advocates of parental rights and educational freedom. The escalating attacks on home education are part of a growing and coordinated movement to control, undermine, and eventually end homeschooling, experts warned.
From Minnesota and Illinois to Connecticut and beyond, lawmakers have in recent months been exploiting extremely rare incidents of abuse or neglect as a pretext to target the millions of parents who provide a world-class education for their children outside of state control. It is part of a strategy to bring all children and families under government control.
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Just this week, thousands of parents were forced to descend on the state Capitol in Hartford to push back against a major assault. Following a state report calling for more government “protection” of homeschooled children — as if they needed protection from their parents — lawmakers held an “informational hearing” designed to demonize home education.
No legislation has been formally proposed, yet. But bureaucrats, activists, and far-left media outlets such as NBC News seized on the story of a stepmom in Waterbury who allegedly held her stepson captive for two decades to push for more government oversight. Apparently, the stepmother offered “several explanations” to school officials about why she was withdrawing the then-11-year-old victim, including a mention of homeschooling.
The state’s “Office of the Child Advocate” (OCA) released a report this week calling for more control. Among the policy recommendations: “that the parent and child appear annually to provide enrollment documentation, that the child be independently evaluated annually for academic progress, and that the parent provide initial and periodic assurances that the child is in good health.”
State Senator Ceci Maher, who leads the legislature’s “Committee on Children,” argued it was just about keeping children safe. “What we’re looking at is, how do we thread this needle of keeping children safe and supporting homeschooling,” she was quoted as saying in news reports, with no reference to the appalling conditions faced by so many victims of government schools.
Gov. Ned Lamont, also a Democrat, has echoed calls for more government control of homeschool families. “I’d like to talk with the legislature about ways we can stay in better communication – make sure those kids are being well protected, not just in school, but at homeschool as well,” he said.
Republican lawmakers, though, blasted the exploitation of the highly unusual case as a pretext to regulate all innocent homeschool families. “To respond [to the Waterbury case] by targeting the 40,000 law-abiding families who successfully educate their children at home is misguided, unjust and unfair,” argued State Sen. Jeff Gordon.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Steve Harding lambasted the OCA’s proposals for more control and how they were released the same morning as they were going to be discussed in the legislature. “What a disgrace, what a disgrace — what a spit in the face it is to people in this room,” he said.
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