I always thought home-schooling was a way to keep your kids safer. That's not the case for Banita Jacks four daughters who were murdered while under her care in Washington.
According to the New York Times the lack of supervision of the home-schooling process, some experts say, may have made it easier last year for Ms. Jacks to withdraw her children from school and the prying eyes of teachers, social workers and other professionals who otherwise might have detected signs of abuse and neglect of the girls.
Instead, the children, ages 5 to 17, slipped through the cracks in multiple systems, including social services, education and law enforcement. Their decomposed bodies were discovered earlier this week by United States marshals serving eviction papers on the troubled family.
The absence of any home-schooling regulations in Washington is largely the result of advocacy and litigation by the Home School Legal Defense Association, which since its founding in 1983 has transformed the landscape for families home schooling their children. Once against the law in all but five states, home schooling is now legal throughout the country and highly regulated in just six states, New York among them. About 1.1 million of the 50 million school age children were home schooled in 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics says.
Of course Ms. Jacks feels she is no to blame for killing her kids, saying the children died in their sleep and were possessed by demons.
That sentence makes me feel sick.
While home-schooling is not to blame for the horrifying murder of these four innocent children, it did prevent them from surveillance. Kids who show signs of abuse are noticed by teachers and school administrators whereas children who are home-schooled may be more easily hidden from authorities.
This is not to say home-schooling is a terrible thing. For many home-schooling increases grades and offers individual attention. Statistics claim that students who have been home schooled their entire lives have the highest scholastic achievement. In every subject and at every grade level of the ITBS and TAP batteries, homeschool students scored significantly higher than their counterparts in public and private schools.
Regardless of whether you are pro or against home-schooling, the real issue here is abuse. Maybe the school system could have prevented this murder, sadly we'll never know.
To learn about child abuse prevention visit http://www.childabuse.org/
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