Story by Davis McKinney
Graphics by Meredith Wilson
STOKESDALE, N.C. — In the third grade things began to fall apart in public school for Autumn Williams.
“She was falling through the cracks,” her mother, Cindy Williams, said.
As a child on the autism spectrum with an attention deficit and hyperactive disorder, Autumn required a special focus from teachers. The school system suggested she be put into a self-contained special education class.
Her parents said no.
Williams had been a minister for 10 years, but she left that career to start a new one: She opened her homeschool, Williams Academy, in 2003.
“We could see all these different strengths in her at home, and none of that was being nurtured,” Williams said.
Many other families have made the same decision. Since Williams removed her daughter from public school, more than 50,000 homeschools have opened across North Carolina. Last year, more students in North Carolina attended homeschools than private schools.
Homeschooling has become a driving force in the North Carolina education, and is largely left untouched from government intervention.
“…I have bitten off more than I can chew with this kid.”
On paper, the extent of North Carolina’s official homeschool policy is minimal. Homeschools are required to meet 180 school days each year and keep an attendance log as documentation. Homeschooled students must also complete a standardized test annually, and these scores must be on file. Apart from immunization records, no other information must be given to the state government.
If public school policy gives teachers a road map for their education, homeschool policy merely provides parents with a target destination. And that destination varies depending on the wishes of homeschooling parents and teachers.
Because of this lack of structure, Williams found teaching Autumn overwhelming at first.
“That first year I tried to do it myself and I was like: ‘OK, I have bitten off more than I can chew with this kid,’” she said.
Then Williams attended a homeschool convention and discovered Classical Conversations, a homeschool group and curriculum provider that offers structured lesson plans to parents and other homeschool teachers. Participating families work through lessons at home, then meet once a week with fellow Classical Conversations students and tutors.
“I liked the program because it gave me a schedule and framework to frame all of my homeschool,” Williams said. “And it kept me accountable to the other parents and the tutors.”
While accountability came from the curriculum provider, Williams feels it certainly did not come from the state government.
“I can say that in 10 years of homeschooling her, no one ever checked up on us,” she said.
Though North Carolina law requires homeschools to keep attendance logs and score records, it does not require teachers to report this information by mail. Only if the N.C. Division of Non-Public Education contacts them must they provide their documentation. Nevertheless, Williams said she mailed in her records every year.
“But nobody ever called to say ‘you did this wrong,’ or ‘you did this right’ or thank you for sending this,’” she said. “It was very loosely organized.”
Williams does not think this hands-off approach is a bad one. She said the most attractive part of homeschooling Autumn was shaping her education around her interests and learning styles.
“Not being wedded to the state curriculum gave her more opportunities to learn,” she said.
These opportunities made Autumn’s school days look quite different from an average day at public school.
“If there was something we came across that we didn’t understand, we’d jump in the car and head to the library to try and find the answer,” said Williams.
She visited museums in Raleigh, toured Civil War battlefield, participated in archaeology digs, and learned about Mayan ruins on the family’s vacation. All these could be counted toward the 180-day requirement.
“We could really integrate everything she was learning into our lives,” she said. “Even family vacations were used to go to places that we’d studied about.”
The state Division of Non-Public Education estimates more than 127,000 students are homeschooled. North Carolinians for Home Education thinks it’s more like 200,000. Even when using the conservative estimate, it is clear more than 10 percent of the North Carolina’s youth are being educated in the same regulation-free environment as Autumn.
“…A great equalizer”
Though the number of N.C. homeschools has steadily grown over the last 30 years, Julie von Haefen is an avid supporter of the public school system.
“It is a great equalizer,” von Haefen said. “I believe in my heart that it’s the one thing that gives all kids the exact same opportunities from hopefully even before they start kindergarten.”
Von Haefen has three children enrolled in Wake County public schools. She also serves as the president of the Wake County Parent-Teacher Association.
“Public schools have to offer the same things to all kids,” von Haefen said. “They have to offer meals, they have to offer transportation, and they have to offer special education services. So that’s why public school is so important and why I think it needs to be supported much more than it has been.”
Von Haefen serves as a liaison between the 182 smaller PTA groups across the county and the Wake School System. She also serves on a committee working to generate more family and community involvement in the public school system.
Von Haefen said every child and family has their own needs, and homeschooling may be a fitting alternative for some children across the state. However, von Haefen feels public schools offer unique, important experiences.
“I feel like they’re getting such a great education with the diversity and the richness that a public education brings,” she said.
“We would not require oversight…to be a parent”
For years North Carolina has been known as a homeschool-friendly state. Spencer Mason, Law and Policy Director at North Carolinians for Home Education, works to make it friendlier.
“A lot of parents decide to homeschool because they think they can do a better job than the public school system is doing,” he said.
Mason lobbies legislators for laws that would benefit homeschooling families across the state. He sees few benefits in increasing government oversight of homeschools.
“Right now, we would not require oversight by the state to be a parent,” he said. “I think that really falls into the same category because parents really want what’s best for their children.”
Tami Fox began homeschooling her daughter at Fox Christian Academy in Hickory, N.C., for the same reason.
“We were noticing some deficits where teachers were strong in some areas and not as strong in others,” she said. “She was not able to successfully do fourth-grade math, and she’d had no phonics.”
Fox still homeschools 18 years later. She’s graduated three of her children, and is teaching the other three each day.
“I could tailor education to their strengths and weaknesses, and I could choose different curriculums,” Fox said. “What worked for my daughter did not always work for my next child.”
Though the personalized education was a better fit for Fox’s children, it likely came at a cost. She used Saxon Math workbooks, which can cost up to $130, and purchased standardized test booklets for her children each year.
Fox’s involvement in homeschooling has made her a prominent figure in the North Carolina system. She serves on the board of directors of the Homeschool Alliance of North Carolina, speaks at conventions around the country and runs her own homeschooling blog. She said this work puts her in contact with many families on the cusp of removing their child from public school.
Fox said prospective homeschoolers commonly worry about the impacts on their child’s social life. She uses homeschool co-ops, which offer supplementary courses like art and music, and community programs to bolster her children’s socialization. She even runs her own homeschooling group, called FACT.
“We do a monthly get-together with all the kids,” Fox said. “We play sports, we play games, we visit the fire department and we’ve done arts and crafts. Just all sorts of things.”
She feels the main problem in the public school system is the lack of funding.
“What I hear from the teachers I interact with is that they don’t have access to the resources they need to teach their class,” Fox said “School systems don’t have the money and the class room that they need.”
“…Disillusioned with the system”
Williams developed her own quarrels with the public school system firsthand. She became a public school teacher in 2009, teaching special education at Rockingham County High School. She grew irritated with Common Core and “high-stakes testing,” as she called it.
“General Assembly people tell teachers, who are trained educators, what they need to be teaching and how they need to be teaching it,” she said. “And you’re a bad teacher if the students don’t score high enough on a test.”
Williams continued to homeschool her daughter while teaching in a public school. When she reached the higher levels of curriculum, Williams said Autumn was predominately directing her
education by herself. Autumn received a high school diploma from Williams Academy in 2012 and enrolled at Salem College soon after.
Williams retired from public school teaching in 2014, and said she understands why so many families are choosing to homeschool in North Carolina.
“I think parents generally are just disillusioned with the system,” she said. “They’re just so disgusted with the bureaucracy and the focus on the test scores.”
[ Check out this video and photo gallery about the growth in homeschools in N.C. by Lidia Davis and Brenna Elmore ]
