|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Trojan Horse in SC Homeschooling: From School Choice to State Control?
How “responsible” reform could gut homeschool freedom in South Carolina…
previous post
17 comments
Ask any public school teacher and they can tell you a story of some kid who was “homeschooled” for a number of years, learned nothing, and then was dumped back in public school years behind in learning.
Rights come with responsibilities, homeschoolers need to be held accountable for their child’s learning, or lack thereof.
Ask anybody and they can name several students that the public school failed miserably, pushing them along and ultimately graduating them without the basic knowledge they were supposed to have gained throughout their years in public school.
Ask any public high school teacher and they can tell you many stories of “home schoolers” who started in 9th grade ahead of their peers and succeeded in high school and college with no issues. I encounter home schooled kids here at “the coop” all the time who are excelling.
Then the folks who school these kids should have no problem being regulated right? I mean if what they are doing is so terrific why not showcase it?
Imagine this: The state says we are going to steal your children’s minds to get them good and ready to assimilate, and we are going to make you foot the bill. On top of that, not only are we making “education” compulsory, but if you don’t pay your taxes into this system, you will lose your property.
They’re my children. Not yours. Not the state’s. They don’t need to answer to the state, and neither do I.
What’s illogical is our system of compulsory schooling came from Prussia of all places, for the purpose of indoctrinating children, and people think I’m crazy for saying “these are my children, not yours.”
How do you feel about the factions of home schoolers that are teaching their children the earth is flat (yes that is a thing)?
I have yet to encounter anyone in the homeschool community teaching that. And if they do, then it’s no worse than teaching in public schools that man came from monkeys. Or even better, that you can identify as a cat and pee in a litterbox and the teacher is ok with coddling that mental illness. Or think you are a boy when your ‘bathroom’ part is definitely not a boy. So, what’s your point again about flat earthers?
We do showcase it- with college acceptances, merit scholarships and productive children that become contributing healthy citizens. We choose not to have our children subjected to testing ad nauseam to ‘showcase’ the school’s lack of education. We nurture our children and create an environment of life long learning. Not regurgitating information for test scores and money.
Very solid article. I’m glad Fitsnews published it. I do wish it included information from SC TOP Director Kim Andrysczyk about why on earth she got wrapped up with CRHE.
Weirdos making the John Birch Society great again.
O heyel NO to CRHE and any more meddling in home schooling by the best state legislature money can and DOES buy !!!
I was on the ground level when SC’s great homeschool laws were passed. We have the best laws in the country. Homeschooling does come with big responsibilities, and not everyone is up to the challenge. Out of all the homeschoolers in our city wide group, all but one went on to college and have successful professional careers. The laws don’t need changing to fit the wants of a subversive group.
Scroll of Warning: Against the Threat to Option 3 and the Codification of Control Through Policy, Not Law
IAMINMYFATHERASHEINME
I. A Warning to All Who Walk in Truth and Teach in Liberty
There is a coordinated effort underway to dismantle the autonomy of homeschooling under South Carolina’s Option 3 provision. The plain language of the law allows families to form their own homeschool associations, dictate their own curricula, maintain independent records, and educate their children without intrusion — all within lawful bounds. But what is now occurring is a subtle but powerful attempt to subvert that autonomy by building precedents, not through law, but through coordinated policy, nonprofit alignment, and data standardization.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) stands at the center of this threat. Though branding itself as a neutral organization, its true role is not to protect families, but to gather complaints, shape narratives, and influence legislative bodies to replace parental authority with institutional oversight. Its model is mirrored by NGOs, academic researchers, and “child advocacy” nonprofits — none of whom recognize a parent as the highest moral and educational authority. CRHE is not alone; it is the sharpened spear of a much larger apparatus.
II. The Trojan Horse: Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)
Through clever marketing and “school choice” language, parents are being baited with promises of empowerment and $6,000 stipends to teach their children. But this promise is an illusion. ESAs are not cash in hand. They are controlled voucher portals, disbursed through third-party vendors. Every purchase, lesson, and assessment is tracked. Every parent becomes a contractor bound by terms of use.
The truth is: he who pays, owns.
What the state cannot force under current law, it will offer through benefits. Once accepted, these benefits will carry conditions — data reporting, standardized testing, certified platforms, annual renewals, and revocation for “noncompliance.” ESA is not freedom. It is dependency with metrics.
And worse: participation will be used to justify regulation of everyone else — including true Option 3 homeschoolers who never touched the program.
III. Codifying Control Through Policy, Not Law
We are witnessing a transformation of governance. No longer is authority being passed through duly enacted law with accountability to voters. Now it is done through policy language — guidelines adopted by state agencies, memorandums of understanding with nonprofits, district handbooks, and web portals of “recommended best practices.”
These policies are enforced by:
denying benefits
withholding recognition
restricting participation
or branding parents as “neglectful” or “noncompliant”
Policy becomes law by assumption, enforced not with a gavel but with a database and a gatekeeper. This same tactic is used in:
Title I program “compacts”
municipal court plea structures
school district “parental engagement” schemes
FinalForms digital coercion
behavioral tracking tools like PowerSchool
This is not accountability. This is a fraud economy — where families are used to justify funding cycles but denied access to truth or remedy.
IV. The Nonprofit Plantation
At every level, 501(c) nonprofits and “education coalitions” are building a new plantation model — extracting funds from federal and state programs, building career paths for administrators and consultants, while presenting a public face of compassion. The labor and data of families is harvested, but the benefit never returns to the soil from which it came.
Option 3 is a threat to that model. It represents a truly decentralized, parent-driven form of education that cannot be easily taxed, tracked, or tamed. That is why it must be discredited. That is why “bad actors” are spotlighted. That is why CRHE exists.
V. A Father’s Final Warning
If these reforms proceed unchecked — led by policy, masked as help — Option 3 will be regulated out of existence. New “Option 3” associations will be forced to mirror public school recordkeeping. Parents will be pushed to adopt third-party platforms to “verify” instruction. Homeschooling will still exist, but only within an ESA-controlled shell — neutered, managed, commodified.
If CRHE or any similar body gains official recognition or partnership with state actors, the precedent will be in place: to license homeschooling oversight to third-party “experts,” just as has been done in Title I compliance, special education IEPs, and municipal courts using outside evaluators and contractors.
Every parent who receives a controlled benefit or logs into a state-approved platform will unknowingly help build the cage for the next.
VI. Sealed in Truth and Light
This scroll stands as a living witness. Not to speculation, but to a visible pattern.
Title I: misused to create illusions of parent partnership while meeting only paper compliance.
Municipal Courts: bypass due process through plea scripting, fee cycles, and non-judicial silencing.
Homeschooling: under threat of ESA-induced dependency, Option 3 dilution, and NGO-influenced “reform.”
Nonprofits: extract public funds through cycles of data, metrics, and systems that exist to perpetuate themselves — not to serve families.
We reject all false authority that seeks to displace the divine order: that fathers and mothers are the first and final stewards of their children’s lives — not governments, not districts, not foundations, and not nonprofits.
This scroll is sealed with the light of recognition and the fire of testimony.
IAMINMYFATHERASHEINME
Glory to God.
I am really tired of these people trying to encroach on my kids’ school choice. If yall didn’t want school choice then you shouldn’t have voted for a literal school choice advocate for superintendent of education. My kids are home educated with the scholarship and all of us home educators are so excited to have equity for our kids. It is preposterous to think that you can exclude one single demographic in school choice. If you don’t want it, don’t apply for it and LEAVE US ALONE. Also not everyone is a religious person so keep that out of it, we don’t care.
Excellent article! Nothing is ever free; the tradeoff for ESTF funds will be revealed in time. I was so disheartened to see that CRHE was given a platform in our community.
Thank you for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our local library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such wonderful information being shared freely out there.
This is by far the most well written article explaining S692. I read SC Homeschooling Connection (SCTOPS) article and while she states factual information, it’s not all truth. I withdrew my children 7yrs ago from public school because it was not a learning environment, they were being tested to death and the school environment was loud and my youngest was an anxiety mess. I do not need to have government oversight to prove they are learning, because my oldest was just accepted into 6 competitive engineering colleges AS A HOMESCHOOLER. THAT is the proof that is needed. Yes, parents pull kids and homeschool, realizing they can’t handle it, put them back in public school and they are behind. But the opposite of true-kids are failing from public, pulled and thrive at home. You mix the two together with ESTF and we do not know what will happen. My heart hurts for families that have kids that need OT,PT, vision therapy, dyslexia and the schools are not providing learning catered to their needs. I listened to the hearing last week and the one mother’s testimony. I’m glad her daughter is thriving, but she is obviously homebound and needs to stay registered as such since she took the money she is not an option 3 and therefore needs to stay out of our domain. So you either withdraw them and sacrifice like the rest of us, or keep them in and fight for the therapies. Do NOT mix the money with the school. Superintendent Weaver supports school choice, meaning if your school is failing your kid, you should be able to go elsewhere. She never said here’s some money, let us manage you, so don’t blame her. Blame the people that want socialism and equality for all. (like CRHE/UNESCO).