Homeschooling is legal and growing in many countries but is virtually forbidden by law in Germany and a few others. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has reviewed and upheld this ban. Is home education a human right? How do these courts employ their jurisprudence of proportionality to find banning home education does not violate relevant…

The newly created Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN) at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) invited a group of conservative education thinkers to sketch policy proposals that they would like to see in a new education agenda. The only requirement was that they offer suggestions that would complement the traditional conservative…

Governments in the United Kingdom have been contracting out policy reviews to individuals. One such review, of elective home education in England, reveals serious shortcomings to this practice. This paper explores the shortcomings--methodological and presentational--with the review, and highlights the fact that there was no governmental mechanism…

In this paper the authors carefully study the problem of liberty as it applies to school choice, and whether there ought to be restricted liberty in the case of homeschooling. They examine three prominent concerns that might be brought against homeschooling, viz., that it aggravates social inequality, worsens societal conflict and works against…

This article reviews research on homeschool learner outcomes and evaluates opposition to homeschooling. It synthesizes research on learner outcomes related to homeschooling in areas of students' academic achievement and children's social, emotional, and psychological development and the success of adults who were home educated and finds generally…

Choice is most frequently realized within the public sector using the mechanisms of residence, magnet schools, and open enrollment systems, whereas the voucher-like systems applauded by choice advocates and feared by opponents are extremely rare. Further, the charter sector is neither large enough nor sufficiently prepared to go to scale to…

In this essay James Conroy raises the question of how far the state should engage in the rearing of children, looking in particular at homeschooling as a site for contestation. He considers this question by looking specifically at recent developments in the United Kingdom around the elision of child safeguarding issues with concern about the…

States vary considerably in how they choose to monitor home school families. Policies range from no involvement to requiring yearly portfolios detailing the student's achievement and academic progress. Respecting the right of parents to choose how they wish to educate their children while holding parents accountable for the education their…

Uses the home-education policy arena as a lens through which to view changing beliefs and practices about student assessment. The home-education policies of 10 states illustrate issues relating to accountability in public and private schools and the use of standardized tests. (SLD)

This study was commissioned by Alberta Education to examine the development and organization of private schools in Alberta and to consider future directions. It examines the financial issues related to private schools, the effect of private schools on public school systems and on the education of children, and implications for public school…