They Want to Take Away Your Right to Homeschool

We are part of a powerful, growing state and national homeschooling movement. And that was even before the coronavirus! Now more families than ever are homeschooling and benefiting from this life changing choice.

Unfortunately, that means that those who oppose homeschooling and desire severe restrictions will be working even harder to come against this movement. For example, you probably heard about the Harvard professor who is arguing that homeschooling should be banned and the summit at Harvard that was scheduled (and canceled due to the coronavirus) to discuss what steps the government needs to take to protect homeschool children.

Although the fight might get tougher, North Carolinians for Home Education is up for the task. In fact we have been fighting to protect your freedom to homeschool in NC for over 35 years. This is why I’m asking you to become a member of North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE). When you join, you enable us to continue our work to protect your right to homeschool in NC. Here are some of the many ways that we have worked to protect your freedoms:

• 1987 – NCHE lobbied against companion homeschool bills HB 837 and SB 779, which would have required families to receive approval from a local school board to begin homeschooling, submit to annual progress reviews by the local school board, and provide instruction 5 ½ hours per day for 180 days per year. They also would have required homeschool teachers to have an associate degree to teach grades 1-8 and a bachelor’s degree to teach grades 9-12.
• 1988 – NCHE authored a substitute for House Bill 837. In order to get our bill passed, the requirement for a high school diploma and annual testing were added to our bill. It was ratified and became law. This is the current homeschool law with the exception of the change made in 2013.
• 1997 – NCHE successfully lobbied against a bill that would require a homeschool student’s transcripts to be approved by a local school district before a driver’s license would be issued.
• 1999 – NCHE successfully opposed House Bill 639, Grandparents Visitation Act, that would have eroded parental authority.
• 2005 – NCHE launched a massive lobbying campaign that succeeded in opposing Governor Easley’s proposal to put the NC Division of Non-Public Education under the authority of the NC Department of Public Instruction.
• 2005 – NCHE successfully lobbied against companion homeschool bills HB 779 and SB 439 that would have raised the compulsory school attendance age to 18.
• 2010 – Working with the Parental Rights Organization, NCHE lobbied against the ratifying of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the US Senate. This treaty would override the US Constitution and all state and local laws, and give control of how children are treated to an unelected UN committee.
• 2013 – NCHE worked to author a new legal definition for “home school” to make participation in co-ops and other instruction outside the home clearly legal. NCHE authored companion bills SB 189 and HB 230, lined up bill sponsors, and lobbied for passage of the bills. House Bill 230 was signed into law by Governor McCrory.

This year we responded to the Harvard professor’s article and the Harvard summit with two blog posts: NCHE Responds to the Harvard Summit and The War on Home Education. We also took decisive action when companion bills were introduced in the house and senate of the NC General Assembly that would have increased reporting for homeschool families and identification of military homeschool families. We communicated with the bill’s authors, mobilized the homeschool community to contact their senators and representatives, and we spoke on your behalf in Raleigh when the committee met for discussion. As a result, the senate bill failed in committee and all references to homeschool were removed from the house bill. You can read more about this in the blog post, What NCHE Is Doing to Keep NC Homeschool Friendly.

Do you want us to continue the fight to protect our freedom to homeschool in NC? Then please support our effort by becoming a member of North Carolinians for Home Education today!