Homeschool parents would face fines, misdemeanor charges and even jail time if they do not report themselves to local public school officials, under a new proposal from Illinois Democrats.
Parents also would be required to provide public school officials with a “portfolio” of their children’s work at any time, at any interval and frequency, until that portfolio meets the public school’s satisfaction.
The bill, dubbed the “Homeschool Act,” requires parents to report themselves in writing to local school officials starting in 2026. Parents who do not will be considered truant. They face Class C misdemeanor charges, which are punishable by up to 30 days in jail. They also face fines and lengthy hearings forcing them to comply with the Act. Under this proposal, parents also face investigations by state child welfare officials.
“I would argue that it is actually a really good thing for the good homeschool parents,” says the bill’s sponsor, suburban Chicago Democrat Terra Costa Howard. “The ones who are doing it the right way … they’re going to be able to do that.”
The thinking from bill sponsors, of course, is that parents are inadequate to teach their own offspring how to read, write, and prepare them for adulthood. It is time to bring in the professionals, aka the government, to “protect” these children from mom and dad. Let’s take a look at how things are going at schools run by these so-called professionals.
1. A Majority Of Illinois Public School Kids Struggle in Reading and Math
More than two-thirds of Illinois eighth graders are not proficient in reading or math, according to results from the recent National Assessment of Education Progress. Worse, the public school system is failing minority children in a devastating way. Only 16 percent of black eighth-graders in Illinois are proficient at reading, and only 8 percent of black Illinois eighth-graders do math at grade level.
2. Extremely Limited Education Choices In Illinois
Unless your parents homeschool you, the only way to avoid public school in Illinois is to be rich enough to afford tuition at a private or parochial school, or lucky enough to earn a scholarship. Illinois has no education savings accounts, no school vouchers and no tax credit scholarships. In fact, Illinois notably became the very first state in America to shut down a school choice program funded by tax credits in 2024.
That’s how bad the state’s politicians want to trap kids in failing public schools.
3. Physical Abuse Was Only Recently Outlawed in Illinois Schools
Up until 2021, many Illinois public schools used seclusion rooms and face-down restraints to punish students. The practice was finally banned after the Chicago Tribune and other news outlets published exposés reporting that “some schools routinely locked children in closet-like seclusion rooms to force them to complete schoolwork, for being disrespectful to employees or for behavioral infractions as minor as spilling milk. Inside the small spaces, children sometimes cried for their parents, tore at the walls, or urinated when they were denied use of the bathroom.”
Worse, parents often were powerless against such treatment of their children and often viewed as part of the problem or kept in the dark about the practices altogether.
4. Sexual Abuse in Public Schools
Just this week, a special ed teacher in suburban Chicago was charged with molesting a student. Unfortunately, this story happens over and over again, every school year, statewide. In Chicago Public Schools alone, the office of the inspector general has logged more than 400 investigations into sexual assault involving district teachers and staff every school year since 2018.
In one case, a middle school charter teacher in Chicago met a 16-year-old student on an online dating app, and proceeded to have a sexual relationship with the student. But state child welfare officials refused to pursue the case. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, at the time led by the famed Kimberly Foxx, also refused to pursue charges against the teacher demonstrating that state child welfare workers and those tasked with protecting children are failing at defending minors truly put in harm’s way.
In another case, an elementary school teacher in Chicago Public Schools kissed a student on the lips during class. An investigation into this incident revealed at least six separate allegations against the same teacher dating back six years that had never resulted in the teacher being removed from the classroom.
5. The Law’s Flawed Premise
Costa Howard and her homeschool-hating colleagues have peddled a mistruth that homeschoolers are more likely to abuse their children. Per an Illinois Public Radio story: “An advocate for more homeschool regulation argued there is a link between homeschooling and abuse and neglect that often goes unnoticed.” (Yet this so-called “advocate” has failed to provide credible statistical data to that effect.)
Costa Howard continuously cites in interviews the tragic story of “L.J.,” whom she claims was abused because Illinois allows parents to homeschool their children without obtrusive government involvement. But in this sad story, as well as other examples cited by Costa Howard, the children in question weren’t actually homeschooled. Their parents did no actual educating at home and instead were simply crummy, abusive parents. But all of these children were under the surveillance of state welfare officials, who left them in abusive homes for a year or more.
Certainly, Illinois’ public education system has its fair share of problems. And in Illinois, the state’s lead child welfare agency, the Department of Children and Family Services, is universally accepted to be “beleaguered” and “troubled.” The five items mentioned above don’t even scratch the surface of what public-school families in Illinois face when it comes to a radical woke ideology that is pushed as normal, obscene transgender policies forced upon students, bullying so rampant it recently led an 11-year-old to suicide, peer pressure, school violence, and other problems that keep parents awake at night and checking their cell phones incessantly during the school day.
Homeschool families in Illinois are very aware of these issues, and these certainly are reasons enough to take on the task of educating their beloved children themselves. But parents also choose to homeschool for a litany of other reasons that are based solely on ensuring their children receive the very best education possible, in a way that is completely custom to each individual child.
So forgive us homeschoolers when we say “No thanks” to Rep. Terra Costa Howard’s so-called Homeschool Act. By many measures, Illinois public schools are the very last place someone would want to send children. Homeschoolers don’t want the bureaucrats who run failing public schools to come near their kids. The last thing homeschooling parents need is to live under the dysfunctional government’s thumb.
