Home schoolers across the nation spent a decade fighting for the legal right to teach their children at home. Now the fight is moving out of the classroom and onto baseball diamonds, football fields and basketball courts.
As the first large wave of home-schooled students reaches high school age, an increasing number are pressing for the right to play on public school sports teams and join other extracurricular programs. And they are making their voices heard in school boards, courtrooms and legislatures.
At least a dozen such controversies have popped up in the last few months, and experts predict that many more will follow.
“Home schooling is not a passing fad, and as public schools continue to struggle . . . more and more people will begin home schooling and, as a result, equal access is going to be the big issue,” said Chris Klicka, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based group that works to protect families’ rights to home-school.
Just last week, Plainfield School District 202 school board members hesitantly agreed to let a home-schooled teenager try out for the Wildcats high school baseball team.
“I’m very happy,” said Tad Jones, 14, who on Friday will become the first home schooler to try out for a Plainfield high school team.
The day after the Plainfield vote, the Virginia legislature rejected a bill that would have made it more difficult for home schoolers to play on public school sports teams.
For home educators and their children, the issue comes down to a question of fairness.
“My dad pays taxes just like everyone else, so I don’t see why I am treated differently than the other kids,” said Amy Ensminger, a 17-year-old home-schooled student from Corpus Christi, Texas, who recently lost her legal battle to play on the local school’s softball team. “I think the people who run the schools should be looking out for the best interests of all kids, not just the ones who go to their schools.”
Opponents counter that equal access unleashes a host of problems, such as how to monitor whether home schoolers meet academic requirements for participation, and whether a student who attends classes should be cut from a team to make room for a home schooler.
“We realize and accept that there are alternatives to public education,” said Gary Marx, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “But we need to give our primary support to our public education system or we undermine the system for the millions of students who are in it.”
But the question of equal access to extracurricular activities has generated nearly as much divisiveness within the home-educator ranks. Some home-school advocates fear that joining public school sports teams will invite school officials into the home to monitor academic progress. The Home School Legal Defense Association declines to support equal access laws, since the group’s main goal is to “protect families’ rights to home-school, not to help them pursue government services,” Klicka said.
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“Many see it as a sword that cuts both ways and cuts very deep,” said Mark Hegener, publisher of Home Education Magazine, a Washington-based periodical. “As a taxpayer, I want equal access, but as a home-school advocate, I don’t want more accountability for my children and my family.”
No one knows for sure how many students are home-educated, but experts put the number at about a million, or less than 2 percent of the school-age population. It’s also difficult to determine how many play on public school teams, but home-schooling advocates say they have heard of only a few in the area. Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas said he does not know of any home-schooled students now playing on Public League teams.
For the most part, home schoolers have had limited success in gaining access to school teams. Educators resist, and in the last few years, courts in Pennsylvania, Texas and Montana have held that participation in extracurricular activities is a privilege rather than a fundamental right.
But they have won victories in state legislatures. Elected officials in 10 states–from Washington to Florida and from Maine to Arizona–have eased the long-standing policies that kept home schoolers on the sidelines.
In Illinois, the decision of whether to allow home-schooled children to participate in public school sports is left to individual school districts. Marty Hickman, executive director of the Illinois High School Association, said districts that let home-educated students onto teams must ensure that they adhere to the same guidelines as matriculated students–specifically the no-pass, no-play rule.
At least 112 of the state’s 890 districts allow home-schooled or non-public school students to join public school teams, according to a state survey conducted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. But policies vary widely.
In Chicago public schools, for example, kids taught at home can participate as long they meet academic and residency guidelines and there is space on the team. In Naperville School District 203, they can try out if they take two classes at the school.
“We want these students to feel a part of the school, and by extension, a part of the school’s team,” said Neil McCauley, athletic director for Naperville North High School. McCauley said no home-schoolers are now playing on the school’s teams.
Plainfield District 202 policy requires home schoolers and other non-public school students to demonstrate “that their choice of not enrolling in the public school system was based on the student’s social, emotional or special educational needs.”
It also requires that parents prove each week that their child is passing a specified course load.
“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” said Dave Turner, executive director of the Illinois Principals Association. “If I’m your mom and I want you to play volleyball for the high school team and you need to be academically eligible, what are your chances of being eligible? . . . I am by no means suggesting parents would falsify records, but when you take the main monitoring ability away from the school district, you can expect some nervousness.”