Illinois Homeschool Act

As the Trump administration last week moved to loosen the government’s grip on K-12 education, Illinois inched closer to tightening state reins on homeschooling families and private schools. On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order dismantling the Education Department, pointing to historic lows in math and reading scores. “This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” according to the EO.

Meanwhile, Illinois Democrats have exercised what many say is egregious overreach with a bill that would bring all private schools and homeschoolers under state authority. As part of the Homeschool Act, HB2827, parents who don’t register their students through a “homeschool declaration form” would be charged with a misdemeanor, possibly facing up to thirty days in jail, plus fines.

The House Education Policy Committee passed the bill March 19 despite strong opposition; it now awaits a full House vote.

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic representative Terra Costa Howard, has said her intention is to protect children who aren’t properly educated at home. Likewise, “Democrats say the bill–which contains a portion that requires parents to hand over teaching materials if it’s suspected the child isn’t being educated properly–will strengthen oversight of homeschooling,” according to Fox News.

Shannon Adcock, founder of Awake Illinois, explained, “This is a radical attack on homeschool, and it’s just a simple attack on liberty. … With this bill, should it pass, it would criminalize homeschoolers who say, ‘No thank you, government, we in our home, we have this. You get your own homes in order in the public schools, where fourth-graders and eighth-graders have the lowest reading proficiency we have seen in over twenty years.’”

A Chicago Tribune editorial called the bill an overreach and underscored its open-ended nature. The op-ed notes:

“Why are private schools getting roped into the Homeschool Act? If passed, the act would give the state vastly more oversight not just for homeschooling families, but also private school families, mandating that private schools would be subject to these same information-sharing requirements, which “violates a basic trust between the school and the family,” as the Catholic Conference of Illinois put it. It would be much more reasonable to simply ask private schools to give enrollment numbers and test scores. Most private schools across the state operate on tight budgets, with limited staffing to handle administrative tasks. New bureaucratic requirements are an unfunded state mandate that would strain these schools.

“Is that unintentional? Maybe, but this wouldn’t be the first time state legislation has taken aim at non-public education. A 2021 bill sought to impose tougher standards and penalties on private schools during the COVID lockdown period when those schools opened back up well before their public counterparts, a point of contention with public-school teacher unions. Like now, parents revolted against this proposal, seeing it as an attempt to weaken private schools and impede their ability to operate.

“Why, we ask, are politicians focusing so much attention on homeschooling and private school accountability when, statewide, only 30% of fourth-graders in the public school system can read at grade level?

“What’s the sales pitch? ‘Come to public school, where there’s a 30% chance you might learn to read’? We wish our lawmakers were spending more of their time pursuing ideas to improve our public schools instead of impeding private ones.”