The Response of the National Homeschool Association
to the CNA Homeschool Survey
Over the past ten years, the National Homeschool Association has worked to coordinate efforts by homeschooling parents and support organizations across political and ideological differences, when issues of public policy critical to the homeschooling community emerge, in order to protect homeschooling freedoms from federal infringement.
The NHA Council has decided that the following article, entitled The Military-HSLDA Complex and Our Freedoms, which is based on a column originally published in Home Education Magazine by Larry and Susan Kaseman, is a piece that is important to send to you. Over the past few months, a survey has been mailed to some homeschool support groups soliciting criteria for identifying "genuine" homeschool graduates and seeking information about how to give military recruiters easy access to young people who have been educated at home. These actions have been generated by a law passed in 1998 which allows homeschoolers to enlist in the military at the same "tier" and pay grade as private and public school graduates.
Many homeschooling parents have had the opportunity to remind our legislators that hard cases make bad law at the state level. We now have the chance to enlighten our Senators and Congressional Representatives, along with an opportunity to introduce officials at the Pentagon to the wider homeschooling community. For that reason, we are joining with homeschool parents directly and through their support groups and networks to write letters to Washington D.C. calling for a halt to these data gathering and defining activities.
We know first hand that attempts to codify homeschooling credentials and procedures have led repeatedly to more, not less, regulation and control of homeschoolers. Laws that define homeschooling at the federal level are very likely to trickle down to create similar local and state regulations as had happened in many other areas of education policy, and stymie parents' rights to educate their children in a manner consistent with their principles and beliefs.
As members of the homeschooling community, we need to counter actions by individual homeschoolers and organizations that threaten our freedom. However, we need to do this calmly, rationally, thoughtfully, in a way that does not divide the homeschooling movement. Such a division would play right into the hands of opponents of homeschooling. While doing this, we can also educate military officials and federal legislators about the commitment of homeschooling parents at the grassroots level, and our ability to educate our children without the interference of regulations or controls, particularly at the federal level.
Please join us in writing to the military officials whose addresses are given below, and to your Senator and Congressional Representative in Washington, D.C. to make your voice heard and to protect YOUR family's homeschooling freedoms.
As we challenge this latest attempt at national codification of homeschooling, it will greatly help us to know how many responses this project receives. Please send us copies of your letters in opposition to increased federal standards of homeschooling. We won't be recording names or specific arguments from such letters, just being prepared to demonstrate that there is vocal, widespread parental opposition to these actions.
Please write your letters and send us a copy by April 30, 2000. We must act quickly and firmly in limiting this activity.
It is important that we make our voices heard clearly and promptly. Permission is given to copy and distribute this information. Please read the Kasemans’ article carefully. Additional background documents are available at the NHA website, www.N-H-A.org, or write for a printed copy for $5 (PO Box 327, Webster, NY 14580). These documents include:
1. CNA Survey with cover letter from Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
2. Above-Core Project Proposal from the Center for Naval Analyses
4. Section 571 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999