By AlaskaWatchman.com

Responding to ultra-liberal podcasters who claim homeschool parents are weird for wanting to direct the education of their children, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) praised home education for providing “proven value.”

In Alaska and across the nation, homeschooling is surging. Roughly one in five students are now engaged in home educating in Alaska, one of the highest rates in the nation. This phenomenon has irked left-wing educational bureaucrats, teachers unions and Democrat lawmakers who can no longer control the flow of information to nearly 24,000 Alaska children, and millions more throughout the nation.

According to the National Home Education Research Institute, approximately 3.4 million U.S. children were homeschooled last year, roughly double the number from the pre-Covid year of 2018-2019.

Earlier this week, the hosts of the I’ve Had It podcast asserted that they worry about kids who are primarily educated by Bible studying parents.

“I don’t care if you’re a nuclear physicist. I think it’s just f***ing weirdest as f*** that you want your kids around you all day, every day, and all night,” I’ve Had It host Angie Sullivan said on her show. “I don’t trust somebody that wants to be with their kids 24/7 … I think a lot of dumb people do it because it’s just easier, and that’s a concern … I just can’t think of very many good things about homeschooling.”

Co-host Jennifer Welch echoed these sentiments, calling homeschoolers “freaks of the megachurch” who run “crazy indoctrination factories, hate academies.”

She called home education a “huge problem” that is being promoted by “fear critical thinking more than anything on the planet.”

The DOE shot back on July 15.

“Homeschoolers, like the winner of the Presidential 1776 Award, have demonstrated their ability to succeed at the highest level time and time again,” DOE posted to its X account. “The proven value of homeschooling should never be dismissed as “trickle-down stupidity.” The only thing that is stupid is your ignorance.”

Click here to support the Alaska Watchman.

U.S. Education Dept. blasts podcasters who claim homeschool parents are ‘dumb people’

Joel Davidson
Joel is Editor-in-Chief of the Alaska Watchman. Joel is an award winning journalist and has been reporting for over 24 years, He is a proud father of 8 children, and lives in Palmer, Alaska.


13 Comments

  • Jon and Ruth Ewig says:

    Has this person raised up children? If so, has she stayed at home with them when they were growing up? Did she go to a secular school in elementary, junior high, senior high, or college? This position of the left-wing podcaster reveals the “dumbing down” process at work, that has been going on since or even before Governor Clinton. Author Donna Hearne spied for President Reagan at the governors’ meeting, exposing the damaging “common core” curriculum plan in her book. Anyone can put down God and the church without knowing about either or about what families do when homeschooling. Statistics do not lie. Homeschooling families are outdoing the brick and mortar government schooled students in academics and well-being. The Obama/Clinton/Biden Marxist (Communist) Complex is being used in secular schools and colleges to indoctrinate students against families. This complex is supported by the NEA and AFT teachers unions nationwide.

  • Ok in Anchorage says:

    Oh my. You can’t imagine being around your kids 24/7 yet you imagine that people homeschool “because it’s just easier”?
    I’m not sure how that makes sense. But I suppose it is “easy” to be able to segue from serving breakfast to washing the dishes to math and spelling lessons to folding laundry to recess and Reading before lunch prep while pausing now and then to change a diaper, pick up the colored pencils the toddler dumped on the floor or break up a fight or get some frozen chicken out of the freezer without changing out of my pajamas.
    So, yeah, maybe you win. Homeschooling IS easier than whatever you do, because it’s ordered. Period.

    • Evan s singh says:

      Ok. Maybe enrollment in public schools would ease the complaints you brought upon yourself . My wife and I chose not to have children for several reasons, one of which is the burdens you so persuasively describe.

      • Micah says:

        I fully support leftists not having children. How could you bring children into this mess is good leftist thinking.

        Thank you for doing the world and the future a favor.

    • Steve Peterson says:

      “…you imagine that people homeschool “because it’s just easier”? I’m not sure how that makes sense.”
      Liberalism is not about common sense or logic, it is about feelings. You will quite often hear libs begin a statement with: ” I feel that…”.

  • David Boyle says:

    This is just another attempt to nationally keep the teacher unions monopoly in power. I say, “Parents, pay attention to YOUR children and get the best education fit for them. You know your children best.” Monopolies hate competition because it threatens their funding and power. Unfortunately, Alaska’s K12 system is its own worst enemy because it it inculcating/indoctrinated our kids instead of teaching them to even read at grade level. Parent have the power to make change happen.

  • Steve says:

    Nasty people just can’t help themselves.

  • Tina says:

    Well what do you expect from Jennifer Welch who is of the latch-key generation. Most GenXers were without parents for most of their life.
    She speaks out of experience of not knowing the benefit of having a Focus on the Family model used at home. In her ignorance she doesn’t know.

    • Micah says:

      What a dumb comment. I am a gen x’er who grew up as a latch key kid.

      That is one reason among many my wife and I homeschooled all of our children. And brought them to church.

    • Evan s singh says:

      Unfounded exaggerations don’t help your argument Tina

  • Bob Smithson says:

    These two lades did two things. Expressed strong bigotry against millions of parents around the world. Second, expressed ignorance of empirical evidence from peer-reviewed studies by many scholars across 40 years of research. See new review of research at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0161956X.2025.2605900

  • jon says:

    I know someone who worked with homeschool families. Some are great, some are ok and some are dumb. Those students suffer.