The pandemic has been a disaster for public education. Closed schools and self-serving teachers unions have undermined parents’ faith in the system. The result has been a massive move to private schools and to homeschooling. More than 11 percent of American households are homeschooling their kids. The numbers among black and Hispanic households are now even higher than this average.
There are a lot of reasons for this — I wrote a book on the trend, “The New School,” almost a decade ago. But COVID has accelerated things dramatically.
Homeschooling is safer from infection and, Moreland she important, from the ever-changing whimsof the educational bureaucracy. Rather than put up with the increasingly intrusive and authoritarian behavior of educrats, parents are taking control. Thanks
They’re also finding out that their kids are learning more and faster. (My own daughter wasn’t homeschooled, but after concluding that her public high school was wasting a huge chunk of her day, as she switched to an online program and graduaras early, starting college at 16.)
Now a federal court in my hometown has provided another reason: You’re not only under the thumbs of intrusive educrats; you’re also subject to whatever diktats activists can persuade a federal court to issue. In the case of Knox County, Tenn., schools, that consists of an order to mask all children, despite orders from Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, and the Knox County Board of Education to the contrary.
The court’s order is based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Some parents whose kids have medical conditions that might make them particularly at-risk if they contract COVID sued, demanding the school board order all students to wear masks as a way of accommodating their kids’ disabilities. The school board argued that the ADA requires only a “reasonable accommodation” for disabilities, and that it was prepared to provide that by offering online classes or classes apart from the general student body.