This week alone, four Illinois House members signed on as co-sponsors of HB 2827, which the three chief sponsors call “The Homeschool Act.”

As of this week, 16 House members are willing to sign onto the 45-page legislation and support this unprecedented attack on parental rights.

Homeschoolers from throughout the State are emailing, calling, and planning to visit with their state lawmakers at the Capitol on March 6th. These parents are concerned that their current option to teach their children at home is threatened by HB 2827.

And they’re right.

If HB 2827 became state law, parents’ educational choice to teach their children according to their children’s needs and their families’ worldviews would become dramatically limited.

And how ironic it is.

Admired during COVID

Five years ago, when the COVID pandemic hit the U.S., the vast majority of families nationwide were forced into teaching their children individually at home rather than collectively at the local school. At that time, homeschooling parents were admired and esteemed, asked for counsel and help, and sought their practical wisdom.

The positive spotlight on homeschooling from 2020 to 2022 exposed a viable alternative for families unhappy with the mindset of what they were learning at government schools. After the national emergency, homeschooling grew by over 50 percent in some states.

The top reasons for the growth included, according to the National Household Education Survey (NHES):

• A concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure
• A desire to provide moral instruction
• Emphasis on family life together
• A dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools

Now, homeschoolers are a threat

However, those homeschoolers who were respected and admired during the pandemic have now become suspect and degraded for not sending their children to government schools. Indeed, they are being placed under a societal microscope for not forcing their children to become believers in the religious basis of the government school system: statism or secularism.

HB 2827 is based on model legislation proposed by a national group that works closely with national teachers’ unions—in theory and practice. Both believe that the State, not parents, are the ultimate protectors and wellness seekers for children.

Those pushing HB 2827 are using a psychological tactic of accusing all of being potential abusers who must prove themselves innocent of accusations and suppositions to deserve the right to tutor their own children in their homes.

And all this concerted effort to weed out the extremely rare, yet devastating, abusive cases that exist among the 2 percent taught at home of the overall number of children in America.

It’s that 2 percent that must be controlled, monitored and investigated, the educrats insist.

Worth the fight

It seems impossible, but 40 years ago, our little family started on an adventure that lasted for 20 years and continues in many ways today. We learned early on, in 1985, that homeschooling would not only involve teaching our 3rd—and 2nd-grade sons as well as our 4-year-old daughter the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but it would also demand that our family get involved in protecting our freedoms.

Indeed, it was worth getting involved in 1988 when the Cook County School Superintendent demanded we report our curriculum to him. It was worth stepping outside of our comfort zone in the 1990s when former State Representative Ricca Slone (D-Peoria) demanded homeschoolers report curriculum, academic progress, immunizations, and school attendance to the local county school and health boards.

It was worth resisting in 2012 when state senators who wanted to put Illinois homeschoolers under the State Board of Education’s control attempted to ensnare Illinois homeschooling freedoms.

It is worth getting involved in opposing now, when the strongest and most intrusive legislation ever works its way through the Illinois General Assembly.

Join the homeschooling effort statewide on March 6th at the State Capitol, and yes, bring along a cherry pie.

Get in the effort to stop the “Homeschool Act” and be a part of history.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to oppose HB 2827. You may even want to kindly urge your legislator to get failing government schools in order and leave homeschoolers alone, especially since research suggests that homeschooled students actually score higher on average than public school students.

Please pray that this big government bill to regulate home educators in Illinois doesn’t make it to a hearing.