Homeschooling Becomes Hot Button Issue of Spring
A group of homeschool advocates rallies at the Statehouse March 6.
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If you had “knockdown drag out fight over homeschool” on your 2025 legislative bingo card, you’re more plugged in than most.
It has sort of come out of nowhere that a bill from Rep. Terra Costa Howard (D-Glen Ellyn) aimed at keeping track of the number of kids in homeschool would turn into the “parents rights” battle of the year.
Howard’s bill, HB2827, is designed to require homeschool parents to submit a form to their local school district indicating their child will be in a homeschool program.
Costa Howard says a Pro Publica investigation that unveiled some children who had been pulled from public schools had been abused or had died.
“It's the state's role to protect children. And so it is the state's role to know that children exist in the world,” Costa Howard said. “There is nothing in this bill that prohibits or is burdensome to a parent that decides they want to homeschool their child. There's nothing in the bill that prohibits a family from making the decision to homeschool.”
But supporters of homeschooling have made the issue about the choices parents should have the freedom to make.
“Illinois has plenty of challenges. We all know that. It’s not a secret. We watch the news, but homeschooling is, frankly, not one of those challenges. It’s not a problem, it’s a solution. It’s an answer to so many public-school challenges that Illinois families face,” Rep. Travis Weaver (R-Edwards) said at a news conference last month.
Homeschools supporters and families rallied outside the Capitol last week calling the bill a “slippery slope” to more regulation, though homeschooling is nearly unregulated in the state.
“The outrage is outrageous,” Costa Howard said. “They don't want to have to do anything. They don't want to have to fill out a form. Okay, there. That's what it is. They want Illinois to have zero requirements for homeschooling. Homeschooling still requires you to cover subjects and that doesn't change. Homeschooling still [requires] compulsory attendance and that doesn't change. [This is] filling out a declaration form that you as your family have chosen to homeschool, that's it. And that's it.”
The Chicago Tribune even editorialized on the bill.
Home school families are not required to use any specific curriculum, test for progress and proficiency or to track attendance. Homeschooling parents are not required to have a high school diploma to teach kids in the home.
Costa Howard maintains the bill is not an attack on homeschooling, but an effort to make sure kids aren’t “lost” outside of public school.
“I want to know kids are alive. I want to know kids are exist,” she said. “I want to know that kids are okay, and that they're getting what they need, and that they can enter society prepared, that they're not functionally illiterate.”
Costa Howard says she’s working on an amendment to the bill in the coming weeks to address some concerns with the legislation.
