In the September 16 debate between the two candidates running to represent District 6 in the legislature, Brent Johnson from Clam Gulch made a number of controversial comments about public school education and homeschooling that merit further attention.
In the debate, Johnson said that despite last year’s passage of HB57, which increased the Base Student Allocation (BSA) significantly, the state must provide additional funds for schools and impose new taxes if necessary to do so. Johnson pointed out that it isn’t the amount of money allocated for each student that is the problem; it is the fact that Alaska has declining public school enrollment, partially caused by the increase in kids choosing homeschooling, which deprives public schools of funding.
In this case, Johnson is partially correct. Since 2015, the number of kids enrolled in public schools has declined, while enrollment in homeschooling has climbed from ~14,500 in 2015 to over 23,000 this year.
Johnson identifies homeschooling as a problem to be solved and then issued a vaguely worded promise to move those kids back into public schools as one solution. He used a couple of anecdotes to justify his proposed plan. First, he said that when his kids were young, his family tried homeschooling and also a local religious school in Clam Gulch. Their kids didn’t have success in either of those programs, so Johnson re-enrolled them back into public school. Johnson implied that because these options didn’t work for his children, these are not good options for educating any kids.
Johnson further stressed this point by relating a story he says a teacher told him. Saying that when homeschool kids do re-enroll in public school, they are far behind their peers, and the teachers have to work hard to get them caught back up. Interestingly, I have heard other liberals repeat the same story. Louise Stutes told that exact same tale when she met with voters back in July, and I also heard it at the city council candidates’ debate in Homer 1 year ago. This often-repeated fable sounds more like a liberal talking point devised by the teachers’ union than anything based on reality, and it is easy to prove.
There have been many studies conducted comparing homeschooling to public school, and they all show the same thing. Homeschooling gives better results. One famous study is by Lawrence Rudner at Arizona State University. He found, “The achievement test scores of homeschool students are exceptionally high, and 25% of homeschool students are enrolled one or more grades above their age-level public and private school peers.”
The reality is that homeschooled kids outperform public school students, and that is a big problem for liberal partisans who are more concerned about protecting the union dues paid to the NEA Alaska teachers’ union than they are about providing the best education for our kids. Johnson’s plan for education is to preserve the existing failing system no matter what it costs and despite the fact that an increasing number of parents are unhappy with it. The phrase throwing good money after bad comes to mind.
While we will always need public schools of some form in our communities, the state should acknowledge there is a reason for the growth in the homeschool and private school movements. There is a way that both systems of education can thrive.
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One example of this is being done right now at West Homer Elementary School. This public elementary school didn’t have enough kids enrolled to fill the building, so they have allowed a charter school to use the vacant classrooms in one wing. The charter school helps pay the expense of running the building and preserves the public-school option for parents desiring it for their kids. Unlike other school districts that are forced to close schools because of declining enrollment, West Homer Elementary remained open, and the charter school has a home; everybody wins.
Another example of thinking outside the box comes from the small community of Nikolaevsk, also on the Kenai Peninsula. Because of students shifting to homeschool, there weren’t enough public-school students in the community to keep the school open, forcing the school district to close it. Homeschool parents applied to take over the building, and it is now reopened as the Nikolaevsk Charter School. Both of these success stories are in House District 6, where Mr. Johnson is running for the Alaska House, so he should be familiar with them.
There are ways to fund public education that allow both systems to thrive in Alaska, delivering the best possible education for Alaska’s children. All it takes is politicians looking to solve problems, instead of scapegoating one group in order to pander to the other. Homeschool students aren’t the problem with public education in Alaska; politicians like Brent Johnson are.
The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.
