The CRHE Voice, Volume 3 Issue 1

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Volume 3, Issue 1 ✦ January 2017

Welcome to the CRHE Voice! This monthly newsletter will keep you up to date on what’s going on with the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, as well as letting you know about ways you can get involved with our mission of raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.

Inside this Issue:
- Fund Drive Update
- From the Mailbag
- New Web Content
- Media Mentions
- Research Moment

CRHE By the Numbers

# of total fund drive donors: 33

# of homeschooled students in NC: 118,268

# of states with protections for at-risk homeschooled kids: 2

# of press releases sent out in 2016: 13

Donate!

A Note from the Executive Director

By Rachel Coleman

It is fitting, perhaps, that the new year opened with news that Iowa Senator Matt McCoy is pushing for new protections for at-risk homeschooled children in the wake of the starvation death of sixteen-year-old Natalie Finn. These deaths have become almost expected. They are the unfortunate byproduct of lack of accountability for homeschooling. News of Natalie’s death, coming at the new year, brings to mind the reason we founded CRHE---to advocate for children like her.

Homeschooling should be used to provide children with a good education in a safe home environment, not to hide abuse and provide cover for intensifying abuse. In her 2014 study of child torture, Barbara Knox of the University of Wisconsin found that 47% of the school-aged homeschooled children she studied had been removed from school to be homeschooled. It cannot be denied that homeschooling gives abusive parents the ability to isolate their children, preventing them from contact with individuals who might help them.

This situation is far from hopeless. We created our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database so that we could identify themes in cases of severe or fatal abuse in homeschool settings, and it has served this purpose. In some cases, parents had been previously convicted of violent crimes or crimes against children; in others, the family had a concerning history of reports to social services or social services involvement. Through simple background checks, we can identify at-risk situations and prevent homeschooling or institute checks to protect children’s wellbeing.

No child should suffer Natalie Finn’s fate.

Fund Drive Update!

We raised $1890 in our annual December fund drive. We appreciate all of your support! We accept donations year-round, and are always interested in fostering new monthly donors. During our December fund drive, we learned new strategies for fundraising and harnessing social media to build our base. Thank you!

From the Mailbag
This feature takes a look at one of many messages we receive from homeschooling parents or other individuals asking for information, help, or advice. Identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity. If you would like to contact us with your own questions, you can fill out our contact form here.

“Hi, I need help for my younger sister, who does not have a social security number. She have not been to the doctor and was homeschooled. Do you have any suggestions for how we can prove who she is, so she can get a social security number? She wants to work but can’t. I don’t want her life to be ruined by a decision she had no control over. Thank you so much, I look forward to hearing back from you.”

Thank you for contacting CRHE! We are so sorry to hear about your sister’s situation. It's a story we hear more frequently than we would like.

Your first step should be to go to your local social security office with your sister and any documentation you have and explain the situation to them. They should be able to look at what you have and suggest additional documentation that would satisfy what you are missing. If you speak with them and aren't able to make any headway, feel free to contact us again and we may be able to get you in touch with some individuals we know who have been through this process. Your sister is not alone in this.

Please let us know if you have any further questions, and we wish you all the best!

The CRHE Team

Media Mentions!
Eva P. Ingle, Protection or Privacy? Wilkes Journal-Patriot, Nov. 28, 2016.

New Web Content

In December we published one new testimonial: Maria M.: “I’m Still Playing Catch-Up.” If you’d like to contribute your own testimonial, you can learn how here.

Also in December, we published our sports access study: 2016 Homeschool Athletics Study. This was the first study on homeschooled graduates’ athletic experiences.

Research Moment: Athletics Survey
This month we’re including the abstract for our new research piece, our 2016 Homeschool Athletics Survey. If you’re interested in reading the full piece, feel free to click through!

This survey involved 150 homeschool graduates, who were asked about their athletics participation and perspectives on homeschool athletics. Respondents were located through homeschool advocacy groups’ facebook pages; this survey likely oversampled individuals with negative or mixed homeschool experiences. Respondents were asked what athletics programs they participated in while being homeschooled; whether public school athletics programs were available to them; how participation in public school athletics programs did or would have affected them; and whether they support granting homeschooled students access to public school athletics programs. Respondents overwhelmingly believed that athletic participation was beneficial to homeschooled students (87%) and supported making public school athletics available to homeschooled students (80%). Among additional findings: access to public school athletics was correlated with higher athletic participation in other athletic programs, such as private school, homeschool, and community leagues; respondents who participated in public school athletics viewed their experiences positively; and many respondents, especially those with negative or mixed homeschool experiences, believed participation in public school athletics would have improved their homeschool experience.

Read the full piece here!

Thanks for reading!

That’s all for now, but we’ll be working all month long on important homeschooling issues and research as they come up! If you have any questions or ideas for future issues, please feel free to contact us at info@responsiblehomeschooling.org.

To keep up with our latest news and updates, follow us on Twitter at @ResponsibleHS and like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ResponsibleHomeschooling.