Vermont Eases Oversight of Homeschooling Even as the Number of Students Has Grown 

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• Thom Glick

The number of kids being homeschooled in Vermont doubled during the pandemic, when lockdowns and remote learning rocked school systems. Now Vermont is relaxing the oversight intended to make sure homeschoolers get a quality education.

Starting July 1, families who homeschool will no longer have to submit to the state their annual plans for teaching their children or the end-of-year assessments that document student progress. The changes were part of a low-profile miscellaneous education bill passed by the legislature in May and signed by the governor without ceremony this month.

Homeschooling parents welcomed the policy shift, which they have sought for years. But not everyone is pleased. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a national organization of adults who were homeschooled, warns that reducing oversight may lead some families to take less care with instruction, resulting in harm to children, who have the right to an education.

The Vermont Agency of Education itself proposed the changes, telling lawmakers earlier this year its aim was to streamline the paperwork burden on both the agency and homeschooling families. The "simplifications" to the law, the agency said, will bring Vermont's homeschooling policy — historically one of the strictest in the country — in line with those of other northern New England states.

"This is huge," said Retta Jean Dunlap, a retired homeschooling parent who founded the advocacy group Vermont Home Education Network. She said "99.9 percent" of homeschooling families she's talked to favor the changes, which they believe will allow them more flexibility, independence and a reprieve from cumbersome paperwork.

Leaders of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which advocates for more oversight, aren't convinced.

"Without the accountability in place, some parents will stop living up to their responsibilities," government relations director Samantha Field said.

Those responsibilities were embedded in the homeschooling law Vermont adopted in 1987 amid a national movement to legalize the practice. Since then, parents or guardians who teach their children at home have been required to accept some state oversight. In an annual "minimum course of study" plan submitted to the education agency, parents must provide a list of skills and topics their child will be studying in eight subject areas: reading and writing; math; citizenship, history and government; literature; natural sciences; physical education; health; and fine arts. Then, in an "end of year assessment," the family must prove it followed the plan by submitting a parent report and student portfolio or an evaluation conducted by a licensed Vermont educator.

The state may not deny any family the choice of homeschooling their children. But according to Dunlap, a homeschool lobbyist who educated her own four children from the late 1980s to 2007, the state agency has told some parents they needed to revise their schooling plans or end-of-year assessments. Often the agency would take issue with things that were "picayune," Dunlap said, and that had nothing to do with the quality of the education.

If staff at the state agency considered the instruction inadequate, they could call for a hearing — which could lead to an order that stopped a parent from homeschooling. Dunlap, who has been involved in the issue for decades, said such hearings have been rare.

Under the new law, parents will no longer be required to submit a minimum-course-of-study plan. Instead, they must only pledge to provide at least 175 days of instruction a year and, if necessary, to adapt instruction to meet the needs of a child with learning disabilities.

Parents will still be required to do the year-end assessment but will not have to submit it to the state. And the state's power to hold hearings over inadequate instruction has been stripped. Instead, the agency will "work closely with [the Department for Children and Families] to address instances of educational neglect and truancy as they are identified," an Agency of Education spokesperson told Seven Days.

The COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst for the changes, according to former education secretary Dan French, who left the agency in April.

In testimony in January, French told lawmakers that his agency had always lacked adequate capacity to oversee the home-study program. The problem became more apparent during the pandemic spike in homeschooling. By the 2020-2021 school year, 5,500 Vermont students were being homeschooled, more than double the count in 2018-2019. The number has since declined, but during the past school year, 3,500 students were taught at home.

French said simplifying the home-study policy would allow the agency to reduce staffing from 2.1 to 1.4 full-time equivalents, freeing employees to do other work.

Agency general counsel Emily Simmons told legislators the new policy would change the agency's role from overseeing homeschooling to supporting the families involved — while still ensuring that instruction is adequate, progress is assessed and "the most vulnerable students are protected."

Lawmakers did not spend a lot of time or ask many questions to assess the proposed changes. Sen. Martine Gulick (D-Chittenden-Central), vice chair of the Senate Committee on Education, wrote in an email that the agency made clear in its testimony that it didn't have the capacity to enforce the existing homeschooling requirements. Sen. Brian Campion (D-Bennington), the committee's chair, said nobody came forward to oppose the measure.

But even those active in the Vermont homeschooling community said it is possible the policy change will lead some families to be less diligent in their practices. Colleen Christman, who homeschooled her children until recently and serves as a consultant for other parents, said she wonders whether some families will stop doing end-of-year assessments because they're no longer required to submit them to the state.

"My hope is that ... parents want to do right by their child," Christman said, and will still put in the time and effort they have in the past.

Christman acknowledged that some kids might "fall through the cracks" with less oversight, but she said the same happens to some children in public schools who fail to meet benchmarks.

Dunlap, who has hosted several Zoom meetings this month to get homeschooling parents up to speed on the changes in the rules, said she fully expects that some will skip the end-of-year assessments. However, she doesn't believe that an assessment is always necessary if parents are experienced homeschoolers and know their children well. Still, she's advising families to document children's work in case they are ever accused of educational neglect or investigated by the Department for Children and Families.

At the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, there's a different view. The nonprofit was founded in 2013 to advocate that every homeschooled child receives a quality education in a safe environment. Field, the government relations director, said she and her colleagues who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s are among the first generation of homeschooled kids to reach adulthood. Some of them did not receive much of an education. Field said her own parents stopped instructing her after eighth grade because they were unable to teach high school-level material. Instead, they used Christian textbooks that whitewashed history and taught creationism instead of science.

Having to file educational plans and year-end assessments with the state is an important way to ensure homeschooling parents are providing adequate instruction and to identify families who may be neglecting their child's education, she said.

Before Vermont passed the new law, the organization held it up as one of five states that required thorough assessments. If the problem was the education agency's lack of staff to review the annual reports, it should have hired more people — not pulled back on oversight, she said.

"If the state is going to allow homeschooling as an educational method ... it should receive the commensurate funding and staffing it requires to meet their obligation," Field said.

Dunlap, the homeschooling advocate, disagrees. No amount of documentation would help parents do a better job of homeschooling their children, she said. "None of the paperwork proves anything," Dunlap said. "I can fake the whole thing and you wouldn't ever know." She said the vast majority of homeschooling parents that she encounters are capable and attentive to their children's needs.

Dunlap said she believes the number of homeschooled students will increase again in coming years because some families are dissatisfied with the curriculum or quality of instruction at schools.

She sees the easing of state oversight as an opportunity for homeschooling parents "to loosen up" and let their "creative juices" flow.

"This is really a more natural way to do it," she said.