Those supporting the idea that parents should be the primary decision-makers in how their children should be educated seem to have valid cause for concern. There are people – mostly on the left – who seek to limit, or even abolish, parents’ ability to homeschool their children. In 2020, Harvard Magazine published an interview with Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, who seeks to ban the practice, arguing that it violates children’s right to a “meaningful education.”

She complained that homeschooling is “an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling” and that “if you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything.”

Bartholet also told the magazine that since only a dozen states have rules regarding the level of education required for homeschooling parents, “people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.”

The professor also argued that public schools are more desirable because teachers are “mandated reporters,” meaning they are required by law to contact the authorities if they see evidence of child abuse. “Teachers and other school personnel constitute the largest percentage of people who report to Child Protective Services,” she said.

But is this a valid reason to prohibit parents from deciding how their children should be educated? For starters, despite teachers being mandated reporters, there are still a disturbing number of children being mistreated, even in schools. However, studies have shown that children who are homeschooled fare much better than those attending public schools. The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) noted that homeschooled children “typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests,” and that “78% of peer-reviewed studies on academic achievement show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools.” //

The Maryland proposal might be based on good intentions. But one of the main reasons why parents choose homeschooling is precisely because they do not have confidence that the government is the most effective way to educate their children. The establishment of an advisory council opens the door to more government involvement, which, given its track record, would have a disastrous impact on education.