Making It Legal

Abstract

This chapter clears up some misperceptions about the legal history of homeschooling and provides an account of what happened. In the early 1980s homeschooling regulation was in most states left up to local officials, many of whom were hostile to the practice. Movement activists set out to change this, and they succeeded. There were two strategies. Some tried to mount constitutional challenges to state compulsory education laws, claiming that the First and Fourteenth Amendments give parents a constitutional right to homeschool. These arguments were nearly always dismissed by federal courts. Others tried to mount statutory arguments, claiming that state education laws either should be read as providing for home-based learning or were too vague and needed to be re-written. This strategy proved much more successful, especially as homeschoolers learned the power they could wield through mass demonstrations aimed at influencing state legislatures. By the early 1990s homeschooling was clearly legal and relatively easy to practice throughout the country.