Helen Cordes

A Fox News Channel report pondered whether “the odds are stacked in favor” of home-schooled spelling whizzes who spend hours a day poring over dictionaries, unencumbered by school bells. The program warned that recent home school triumphs, such as the record number of home-schooled spelling bee finalists, and studies showing that home schoolers score higher than regular schoolers on the SAT/ACT, may “reignite the home schooling debate.”

But the debate was ignited and burning nicely before Brit Hume started rubbing two stats together on Fox News. Home school e-mail newsletters often are loaded with slights and skewerings culled from the papers that seek to expose the unfair advantages of learning at home. My personal favorite? Not long ago a Tucson Weekly sports columnist charged that home-schooled kids shouldn’t be allowed to compete with other kids in sports because they have more time to practice.

Meanwhile, the National Spelling Bee folks already have taken steps to placate the parents of conventional schoolers with regulations that require youngsters to have “a full school schedule and varied academic course load” in order to compete.

Well, speaking as an outraged home schooling mom of two, I’m here to say that the home school critics are … absolutely right. And they’re absolutely wrong.

Yes, home-schooled children have plenty of time and flexibility to focus on a talent or interest. No way around it — home schooling can allow kids to spend hours on any given passion, to zip through certain material and move on to more challenging stuff, to take advantage of opportunities like apprenticeships, early college classes and volunteering. And, if they choose, home schoolers can, and will, produce impressive portfolios to wow Ivy League admissions officials. (Note to self: Pursue online bumper sticker biz — “My home-schooled kid just squeezed your schooled kid out of Stanford.”)

But a lot of home schooling advantages aren’t necessarily off-limits to schooled kids. Do you honestly believe that spelling champ George Thampy was the only finalist who spent three hours a day studying for the competition? They all did, regardless of where they went to school. All kids who compete at high levels find the time to pursue their goals. Some who end up in competitions or elite universities attend pricey private schools or charter schools where polishing an individual talent is incorporated into the school day.

And let’s be honest: The folks most likely to cry “foul” about successful home-schooled kids are competitive parents who expect their kids to always win first place. Sour grapes, anyone?

I don’t buy that schooled kids don’t have opportunities to wax creative or follow a talent or passion. The problem isn’t that they aren’t schooled at home; it is what they do at home after they leave school. The latest statistics show that 8- to 13-year-olds spend an average of 6.5 hours daily in front of a screen. There’s no way kids can even discover what their strengths are, much less indulge them, with their creative juices sucked dry by passive staring.

And then there is the stuff they are doing instead of hanging out at home after school. Do kids really need to be in 97 extracurricular activities? Even in my little town, I was shocked to hear the elementary school counselor tell me that the major source of stress for her students is over-scheduling. And I know from researching and writing articles about over-scheduling that it’s an American epidemic. Think what might happen if kids had time to do what really intrigued them and not simply what all their friends are doing or what parents think kids “need” to do to get into a swell college.

The phenomenal success that home-schooled high schoolers are having getting into great colleges suggests that many admissions officials are looking for different “right stuff” these days. Home schoolers are getting into top universities, say officials such as Stanford’s Jon Reider, because they tend to be more emotionally mature (they hang out with more adults) and are inclined to be independent learners who “take responsibility for their education.” This year at Stanford, home schoolers were accepted at twice the rate of schoolers.

Do critics of home schooling really believe that, in the interest of “fairness,” accomplished children should either submit to an educational system that even proponents admit is flawed, or foreswear any advantages proferred by an alternative learning system?

“Maybe we shouldn’t allow people who live near libraries to participate in contests because they can spend more time at the library,” jibes home school advocate Michael Moy. “Perhaps tall people shouldn’t play basketball because they have an unfair advantage.”

Adds Helen Hegener, who with her husband Mark publishes Home Education Magazine, “What is our real goal here? To protect a system or to raise creative, focused, passionate kids?”

Home school critics are right about one thing: Eight hours daily in the classroom puts a big dent in a kid’s day. It’s not like home schoolers do nothing for eight hours a day — it’s just that most kids can get the “school work” out of the way in a few focused hours, and then concentrate on what excites them.

And I am seriously sorry that most folks can’t or don’t want to home school. As Hegener points out, the truly unfair situation about home schooling is that every child could excel if given the same level of individual attention, freedom and support most home schoolers get.

For my part, I have to admit to being a fairly lackadaisical home teacher. I try to put in the hours that I think I should, but writing projects are constantly in the way. Our curriculum — that motley amalgam of used texts, library books and videos, Internet stuff and whatever else I grab — is anything but organized and rigorous. There are entire topic chunks I’ve avoided so far — sorry, I’m just not excited by physical science, but I will get to it. And I’ve got files full of intriguing but unexplored educational Web sites as well as still dormant fabulous field trip plans.

Mostly my husband and I talk with our kids about the world and all of our interests and favorite reading. We encourage their opinions and analysis. And we see the rewards every day as they make spontaneous, cross-topic connections. We see their world expand as they have time to make friends with a fertile mixture of people of different ages, ethnicities and economic classes that they meet in our neighborhood and community, on the campus where my husband teaches and in the inclusive local home school groups we socialize with once or twice a week.

Haphazard as it may seem, this approach appears to be working — at least by conventional school standards. We just received the results of the seventh-grade Stanford Achievement Test for our 12-year-old. My jaw dropped when I found that she “rated” PHS (post-high school) in 11 of 12 test areas.

Don’t get me wrong — we’re happy to know that our eldest daughter “tests well” (and in fact home schoolers do generally score higher in standardized tests), but our goal is most definitely not to create a supercompetitor. Not that it matters. We have not gone unpunished. Upon hearing about my daughter’s test scores, several friends have quickly followed their praise with scolding — not for maintaining an unfair advantages but for depriving the local public school of such a bright, and high-scoring, student.

I guess as a home-schooling parent, you can’t win — but your kids sure can.

Indeed, many thousands of well-meaning parents are being wooed by orthodontists to foot the bill for early or “phased” treatment, an approach in which doctors say they can more quickly and easily render a perfect smile by getting to younger, more malleable jaws (usually between the ages of 3 and 8), rather than waiting for traditional treatment in the preteen and teen years.

There’s just one problem. Mounting evidence shows that early treatment often results in a longer, more costly stint of treatment, and may entail some worrisome side effects. So compelling is this new data that orthodontists increasingly are taking aim at their own, charging that much of the early-treatment trend is fueled by a desire to build up profitable practices by roping in more patients at an earlier age.

Orthodontists are slinging mud back and forth on the subject in orthodontic journals and at conferences, most recently at a national conference held in February at the University of Michigan. (The gathering was called, in part, to debate the controversy. Another national conference examining early treatment is scheduled for next February in Phoenix.)

The Michigan conference didn’t achieve much consensus, but debates were intense and emotions ran high, notes attendee Timothy Wheeler, orthodontic department chairman at the University of Florida and a former “big advocate” of early treatment. “There’s more evidence that early treatment is not always the best solution, but many early-treatment fans don’t seem to want to hear that.”

While professionals spar, potential and present patients are most likely to hear the pros of early treatment. Both sides agree that the early-treatment trend is already firmly entrenched, practiced by 90 percent of orthodontists, says David Hamilton, former president of the American Association of Orthodontists. The AAO’s party line is that all kids need to be seen by an orthodontist, ideally well before age 7. That’s the same message they’re repeating in somber advertorial messages to parents in several national magazines and in a video mailing blanketing dentists’ offices from coast to coast.

The campaign is working. The overall number of kids younger than 18 who are signing on for braces — which nowadays cost an average of $4,000 to $6,000 — has doubled to 4.4 million since the 1980s, according to the AAO. While an AAO spokesperson said the organization doesn’t keep tabs on the age kids begin wearing braces, both early-treatment fans and opponents agree that early treatment rules the orthodontic roost. And as early braces proliferate, the climate fostering their acceptance warms. “If a parent sees lots of other youngsters with braces, they’re much more likely to agree when that’s the orthodontist’s recommendation,” notes Mission Viejo, Calif., orthodontist James Hilgers.

For those parents who bring young children to the orthodontist for an appraisal but remain unsure about beginning braces, newly revved-up marketing efforts aimed at young patients and their parents help encourage an affirmative decision. Kids can be swayed by the comprehensive incentive prize system now offered by most practices: “Wear your headgear, earn a movie pass!” More important for fence-sitting parents, most practices include one or more “treatment coordinators,” sales and marketing experts whose mission is to persuade the hesitating parent of the necessity of braces — the earlier the better. All told, notes Hilgers, “it’s hard for parents to resist the voice of a medical authority and the treatment coordinator.”

Hilgers ought to know. He was one of the earliest early-treatment fans, and, at that time, when a youngster of just about any age “walked through the door, they got braces,” he recalls, admitting that part of his enthusiasm was based on a desire to retain more patients. Over the years, he has become convinced that much of early treatment doesn’t make sense. “Kids [in early treatment] tend to stay in orthodontic devices longer, which can create burnout for the patient and is more costly for the parent,” he says.

Typically, treatment started earlier is done in phases, and long-term patients can end up spending an additional $1,000 to $2,000 per “phase.” This longer time span — which can add up to a total of five to seven years in orthodontic devices — increases the chances of orthodontic treatment’s negative side effects, Hilgers adds. These can include gum disease because of difficulties in cleaning teeth in braces and “root shortening,” which is a result of moving teeth and can cause tooth instability later on. For his part, Hilgers now typically treats children at a time when many adult teeth are emerging — around 10 years old or “whatever age will involve less time in the mouth.”

Hilgers predicts that the early-treatment mania will fade as more orthodontists question its usefulness, but, he says, that is likely to take a while. “I can guarantee you that the large, profitable practices are built on early treatment, and those people tend to be very adamant about the virtues of early treatment,” he says. Nonetheless, more and more orthodontists are questioning early treatment and demanding proof of its superiority.

In fact, studies have begun to indicate that in many garden-variety orthodontia cases, early treatment is no more effective than treatment later on. In a 10-year study of 7-to-12-year-olds with the most common orthodontic problem — buckteeth (“overjet” in orthodontist-speak) — University of North Carolina orthodontics professor Camilla Tulloch found “no significant difference in treatment outcome” between treatments started earlier or later. Yet early treatment took an average of six months longer, which “would tend to raise the cost,” notes Tulloch.

Similar results emerged in a University of Florida study undertaken by Wheeler. Preliminary results showed “no significant difference” between results gained from early treatment and later treatment. But early treatment took an average of one year longer, notes Wheeler. “Early treatment can help some kids,” Wheeler says, “but the truth is that orthodontists do not yet have the data which establishes a criteria for which kids can benefit from early treatment and which kids can wait.”

David Hamilton is one of early treatment’s biggest fans and, perhaps surprisingly, he agrees with Wheeler’s conclusion that the data is not yet conclusive. But the retired New Castle, Pa., orthodontist, who lectures widely on the topic, believes that the experience with children that he and other early-treatment advocates have encountered speaks for itself. Denver orthodontist Chris Carpenter agrees. “It’s impossible to prove scientifically that early treatment is better,” he notes. “But I know what I see in my practice, and it means a lot that so many other orthodontists do early treatment as well.”

As far as Hamilton is concerned, the critics of early treatment are unfair and have interpreted the data incorrectly. The studies of early treatment, which also include a University of Pennsylvania study showing little advantage to early treatment, are flawed, he says, and orthodontists who disparage early treatment simply don’t know how to do it correctly. Early-treatment foes are doing a disservice to patients, he says, half of whom could be helped by early treatment at ages 3 to 8.

A major bone of contention between the two camps centers on the issue of whether or how much growing jaws can be manipulated to help fix teeth problems — that is, expanding jaws with an orthodontic device to create more room for overcrowded teeth.

Early-treatment foes such as Lysle Johnston, University of Michigan chairman of orthodontics and pediatric dentistry, believe that children’s jaws grow at the rate they are genetically programmed to, and that techniques and devices that purport to produce growth are “nonsense.” His many essays in orthodontic journals, such as “Growing Jaws for Fun and Profit,” anger early-treatment proponents such as Hamilton, who faced off with Johnston at the recent Michigan conference. “I haven’t been able to get Dr. Johnston to concede much,” sighs Hamilton. “I simply believe he’s wrong about jaw growth.”

“We’re not people who start everybody in braces because we can,” continues Hamilton. “A good orthodontist knows when to start treatment and when to delay it and when it’s not needed.” Hamilton acknowledges that there may be some overzealous orthodontists: “Every profession has people who are either uninformed or unprincipled,” he says. “My rule of thumb is that it’s about 15 percent.”

All of which is unsettling news for consumers. Orthodontists agree that it’s a good idea to monitor a child’s teeth from an early age, but how does one determine whether advice to begin braces early is sound? “Interview two or three orthodontists,” advises Hamilton. Larry Piekarsky, a New Jersey orthodontist who recently received “tons of letters from pissed-off orthodontists” when he criticized early treatment as a “moneymaker” in his local newspaper, says, with somewhat weary resignation: “As a consumer you don’t ever know for sure what’s reliable advice. Ask around to people you know, then hope you get lucky.”

Recently George W. Bush mixed home schooling with presidential politics in a letter to a Texas home-schooler — now circulating widely on national home-school e-mail listservs — in which he enthusiastically praises home schooling and vows to fight for legislation that would allow families to set aside $5,000 tax-free annually to pay for the educational expenses of teaching at home.

Contrary to stubborn stereotypes, Bush is not preaching to the converted in targeting voters who home-school. An exhaustive look at home schooling released this year by former Department of Education home-school researcher Patricia Lines exploded the stereotype that most home-schoolers are conservative fundamentalists seeking to isolate themselves from blasphemous school systems.

These days, she says, the plurality of home-schooling parents say they’re motivated to teach at home by reasons familiar to most of us: They want to bypass the inflexible bureaucratic aspects of school and tailor learning to students in a way that teachers in classrooms simply cannot. And they are more diverse than ever before, reflecting a wide range of ethnicities, incomes and approaches to learning. (In a Florida state survey, only one-third of home-schoolers said they teach at home for religious reasons.)

Yet this new diversity of home-schoolers has brought to a righteous boil a battle that has simmered for years in the home-schooling community. Despite significant changes in the size and political leanings of the home-schooling movement, a coalition of organizations has dominated since the early ’80s the public face and political advocacy of those who teach at home.

The lead group in what is known as “the four pillars of home schooling” is the Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization run by politically active fundamentalist conservatives who not only maintain a tight grip on the public debate of home-schooling issues but, with a research institute, a lobbying organization and a new home-schooling “college” under their direction, have extended the reach of the HSLDA to issues affecting public schools.

The remaining three “pillars” are: Sue Welch, publisher of the leading conservative Christian home-schooling magazine, the Teaching Home, which prints in each issue contacts and workshops for each HSLDA state affiliate; Brian Ray, president of the HSLDA-subsidized National Home Education Research Institute; and Gregg Farris, who for years has organized conservative Christian home-school conferences and workshops and remains on the board of the HSLDA-affiliated National Center for Home Education.

The pervasive influence that the “pillars” have on home schooling makes less conservative home-schoolers furious, especially in light of HSLDA’s tendency to champion as benignly “pro-parent” causes that are pointedly conservative. The HSLDA is on the record, for instance, as vociferously in favor of corporal punishment and gun ownership and against gay rights and the United Nations.

The group’s pervasive political focus leads some critics to charge that in addition to acting as a home-school advocacy group, the HSLDA is actively pursuing the goals of the religious right. Says Mark Hegener, co-founder of Home Education Magazine, the HSLDA is “part of a socially conservative constituency network using home schooling as a way to further its political goals.”

Adds Chip Berlet, analyst at Political Research Associates and longtime observer of the Christian right: “HSLDA shares the same goal with many other groups that want to make schools — whether public classrooms or home-based ones — a lot more conservative and fundamentalist Christian.” The efforts of HSLDA and similarly motivated organizations, says Berlet, are major players behind recent efforts to mandate creationist curriculum and attack environmental education, sex education and multicultural classroom material.

Founded in 1983 by attorney Michael Farris, a staunchly conservative fundamentalist, the HSLDA got off the ground offering home-schoolers legal representation for an annual fee of $100 per family. Though legal challenges to home-schooling parents are now few, the group still extends the same offer and claims a membership of 250,000 children from 70,000 families. As it nears its 20th anniversary, the HSLDA also boasts significant political clout on national educational issues, even though, say its critics, with less than one-sixth of the estimated home-schooling population in its membership, the HSLDA does not advocate for the majority of parents who teach at home.

Hegener and other critics say they are most upset about the practice of state umbrella groups affiliated with the HSLDA taking control of “inclusive” home-schooling support groups (those without written or unwritten conditions for membership), which provide much of the important how-to and social opportunities home-schoolers need. Even some staunch Christian home-schoolers have defected from HSLDA, reporting that members of the group have gained leadership of nonpartisan support groups and then marginalized members unwilling to sign fundamentalist “statements of faith.”

“This move to exclusivity has caused so much heartache among Christians,” says Treon Gossen, a devout Christian who, after being forced from an exclusive group, started the inclusive Colorado home-school support group Concerned Parents of Colorado. “I think the biggest home-schooling trend you’ll be seeing is more Christians saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Frustrated home-schoolers have in the past several months decided to fight fire with fire, launching a new national inclusive group called the National Home Education Network, which will focus only on home-schooling issues and resources. And in Texas, which boasts the highest number of home-schooled kids at 150,000, a state home-school lobbying organization will debut in November, representing home-schoolers disenchanted with the HSLDA Texas affiliate, which is headed by Republican National Committeeman Tim Lambert.

While the fight over the heart and soul of home schooling has been a fascinating and sometimes frightening saga for observing home-school insiders, it is, in fact, a development that could affect all parents of school-age children. (Full disclosure: I’ve home-schooled two daughters for two years, and I belong to the inclusive Austin, Texas, home-schoolers support group.) The success that conservative fundamentalists have had in setting the agenda for all home-schoolers is one they’re also working to establish in public schools.

At the time he founded the HSLDA, Farris served as staff lawyer for Concerned Women for America and on the steering committee of Coalition on Revival, a group dominated by reconstructionists, who call for “reconstructing” all areas of public life to reflect a fundamentalist ideal of Christian theocracy, complete with a biblical justice system. (Stoning adulterers would be just one legal penalty for hardcore reconstructionists, though not all believe in literal biblical law.) For the coalition, Farris coauthored with Virginia Armstrong a blueprint for how “America can be turned around and once again function as a Christian nation as it did in earlier years.”

These days, Farris is focusing mainly on his role as chairman of the Madison Project, which gave away more than $1 million last year to conservative legislators. He continues to be instrumental in Virginia Republican politics and served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He’s on the board of Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation as well as other political and religious organizations. This fall, as chairman of the HSLDA, he took on the presidency of Patrick Henry College, which markets itself mainly to Christian home-schoolers and opened this fall with 78 students.

Farris remains committed to lobbying for his theocratic agenda in political and home-school circles through peripatetic involvement in conservative organizations and numerous writings. Last September, Farris gathered together leaders of conservative organizations to interview Republican candidates for president, to ascertain their openness to supporting socially conservative issues. Farris, who invited Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, Phyllis Schlafly of Concerned Women for America and Randy Tate of the Christian Coalition to the meetings, described candidate Bush as “reasonably harmonious” with his and the other attendees’ goals and deserving of their endorsement.

The leader of the HSLDA has since been very open about his hope to deliver the home-school vote to Bush. On the organization’s Web site, Crosswalk.com, Farris lauds Bush as the obvious home-schooler’s choice, and speculates that if Bush is elected, he may get an appointment in either the education or legal areas.

(Farris also pens mystery novels, such as the anti-abortion whodunit “Guilt by Association,” and writes editorials and articles for the conservative Washington Times and other publications. He produces the syndicated “Faithful Father Devotional Series,” teaches an online constitutional law class and is the father of 10 home-schooled children.)

The HSLDA founder defends his myriad political activities, saying, “Sure, I do a lot of things personally, such as pro-life work. But with HSLDA, we focus on home schooling, parents’ rights and religious freedom issues.” Adds Farris, “We stand up for them because they form the pillars of home-schooling freedom.”

Not even Farris’ critics quibble over his right to pursue whatever citizen advocacy he chooses — home-schoolers unquestionably comprise every political stripe imaginable and many are outspoken, particularly about their educational philosophies. But the HSLDA, charge Hegener and others in Home Education Magazine, has gone too far. The organization has dominated debate about home-school regulation and legislation by refusing to work with other home-schooling groups, says a recent magazine report.

The magazine also says that the HSLDA is unfairly representing itself to national and local policymakers as the sole representative of home schooling. It has even pushed through legislation that has proved detrimental to home-schoolers, the magazine says. One example: An HSLDA-led legislative effort in New York that was supposed to loosen onerous regulations for home-schoolers led to requirements that parents report periodically to education officials and submit to standardized testing, measures almost uniformly opposed by most home-schoolers. (HSLDA lead attorney Chris Klicka has said that the legislation was “the best compromise we could get.” Critics argue that a coalition of inclusive groups would have gotten a measure more favorable to home-schoolers.)

Most important, says Cheryl Seelhoff, the move toward exclusive support groups with HSLDA affiliation has thwarted access to home-school information and alienates many home-schoolers. Seelhoff, founder and publisher of folksy Christian home-schooling magazine Gentle Spirit, has emerged as a leading voice among devout Christian home-schoolers disgruntled with HSLDA.

According to Seelhoff, cooperation was very common in the early days of modern home schooling. Countercultural home-schoolers of the 1960s, influenced largely by John Holt’s “unschooling” ideas (a child-led educational philosophy that emphasizes real-life experiences as learning), networked amicably with religiously motivated Christian home-schoolers, who began emerging in the 1970s.

In the late 1970s, however, conservative, fundamentalist Christian home-school leaders gained the upper hand, Seelhoff notes. Home-schooling support groups splintered when fundamentalists took over leadership and required members to sign “statements of faith.” Members of these groups also were required or encouraged to follow rigid home-schooling guidelines stressing absolute parental authority, a Christian curriculum and a strict teaching style.

Leslie Moyers, a home-schooling mom of three children in Tulsa, Okla., recalls such an experience when she started teaching her kids at home (not for religious reasons). An HSLDA staff attorney gave a talk to an umbrella group of home-school support groups, she recalls, “and he used scare tactics about how if the groups stayed inclusive, that could allow homosexuals in. He was able to convince people in most of the groups that membership should be restricted.” Subsequently, group officers, and in some cases, all group members, were required to sign statements of faith and submit details about how they home-schooled.

“They even asked group leaders to do home visits to make sure people were doing home schooling the ‘right’ way,” Moyers says. Many who opted out of the groups launched the inclusive HERO support group network.

In other places where inclusive members refuted demands for exclusivity, fundamentalists often started rival “exclusive” groups, a move that splintered home-school unity in many states. Many exclusive groups responded to the call for “biblical separation,” which allowed no interactions — not even children’s play groups — with other home-schoolers. Needless to say, the free exchange of information among different groups and at home-school conferences was greatly restricted. Members of inclusive groups were often branded as “secular humanists” and excluded from gatherings and resource listings.

For newcomers, and home-schoolers in more isolated areas, the exclusivist influence continues to be particularly problematic. “Just starting out in home schooling is really scary,” notes Laura Derrick, home-schooling mom of two and spokeswoman for the National Home Education Network. “Newcomers really need support and advice.”

Newbies sometimes end up in exclusive groups, because if they contact HSLDA or other exclusive local groups, that’s the only contact they’ll get. But if they can’t abide by the rules, they can risk private or public “confrontations” designed for those who question rules dictating home-school activity, right down to a field trip dress code. “I’ve had home-schoolers calling me in tears, wondering whether all home-school groups are like this,” reports Derrick.

Holly Furgason was one of those newbies, a Mormon member who joined a conservative Christian support group “because it was the only one around” when she began home schooling in New Hampshire. She was initially puzzled when her children were followed by an adult whenever they left the room to play with other children. “Then I realized that the others in the group didn’t consider me the ‘right’ kind of Christian, so they needed to supervise their children when the children were with mine to make sure that nothing ‘bad’ was said to the kids,” she recalls. Furgason now heads an unschooling support group in Houston.

Separatist strategies, as bizarre as they may seem to people like Furgason, make sense to those who sincerely believe they must keep their children from influences they consider evil. “The most significant motivation [for exclusive home-schooling] is what I am protecting them from — companionship with fools!” writes Jonathon Lindvall in Home School Digest. “Some might call this harsh and reactionary, but I am convinced God has called me to take seriously my role as protector of my family. Not only do I need a good offense to win, but a good defense is also imperative.”

And there are plenty of supporters among home-schoolers who benefited from the legal representation of the HSLDA. Maria Elena Kennedy, a Catholic home-schooling mom of three children in suburban Los Angeles, called on HSLDA five years ago, when an anonymous tip that her children were “abandoned” in the backyard brought child protective service workers and police officers to her house. HSLDA lawyers won a $70,000 settlement and a ruling that police officers had violated the Kennedys’ civil rights by not obtaining a search warrant before entering the house.

“This can happen to anyone,” says Kennedy. “Our membership was well worth it. HSLDA spent thousands of dollars defending us.”

Still, many home-schoolers point out that home schooling has been legal in the United States for more than 10 years, making legal challenges like the Kennedys’ fairly rare. And critics such as Shay Seabourne, a Virginia home-schooling mom who is active in her state support group, note that most home-schooling litigation involves disputes that go to family court, cases that feature ex-spouses disagreeing about expenses or custody as well as teaching at home.

The HSLDA notes in its membership agreement that it will not take cases involving “divorce, child custody or related domestic affairs.” One longtime HSLDA member and divorcing Colorado mom discovered this the hard way after her initial request for help resulted in a response from HSLDA lawyers that they would pray for her and send an information pack to her lawyer. HSLDA finally responded, Seabourne reports, after other home-schoolers protested.

In the face of the mounting criticism over the years, HSLDA has reacted with charges of discrimination. Farris sent a response to the initial Home Education Magazine report calling critics “anti-Christian secular bigots.” In fact, many of the critics cited in the report are Christian, and HEM regularly runs articles and columns by Christian home-schoolers. The initial reaction of HSLDA senior counsel Klicka to my questions about criticism aimed at the group was this: “We are a Christian organization and we are real clear about that.”

When told that critics of the HSLDA differentiated between the many thousands of home-schoolers who happen to be Christian and those who advocate politically motivated, exclusivist home-schooling tactics, Klicka maintained that the criticisms are simply unfounded. If HSLDA has the strongest voice on issues of home schooling with the public and legislators, that is the result, he maintains, of hard work on the part of its leaders and members. Klicka says that “in the real world,” home-schoolers with differing opinions can’t always work in coalition; and that the HSLDA unapologetically forges ahead to “do the very best we can for the good of all home-schoolers.”

Referring to cases in which HSLDA secured legislation others deem bad for home-schoolers, Klicka says, “Sometimes when the legislative climate is bad you’ve got to accept things that are less than perfect.” And as for HSLDA’s pursuit of issues unrelated to home schooling, well, they are all related, Klicka says. “If these battles are lost, they will also damage our home-schooling freedoms.”

HSLDA’s sustained lobbying against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — the top issue cited in an “issues alert” sent by the HSLDA to all members of Congress last fall — is necessary because “if children have rights, they could refuse to be home-schooled, plus it takes away parents’ rights to physically discipline their children,” says Klicka. He had a similar explanation for the group’s opposition to increased federal child abuse laws — more laws would mean more likelihood that corporal punishment could be defined as child abuse. (Just this month, administrators from Patrick Henry College were among those testifying before the Virginia Department of Social Services for a measure that would allow foster parents to physically discipline foster children.)

As for the notion that HSLDA tries to define proper Christians as only those who are fundamentalist and politically conservative, Klicka insists, “Unity among Christians has never been stronger.” And Klicka’s take on the assertions of Seelhoff, the publisher of Gentle Spirit? “Oh, that adulterer,” muttered Klicka. “I haven’t read her stuff, so I can’t respond to it.”

The “adulterer,” however, is well-known to HSLDA insiders because she was once a great asset to the four pillars. As the circulation of Seelhoff’s magazine, Gentle Spirit, skyrocketed, Welch, publisher of the Teaching Home, asked to list Seelhoff’s popular home-schooling workshops in her magazine and Gregg Harris invited her to speak at home-school conferences.

But when she left her husband (who she said was abusive), violating a fundamental Christian taboo on divorce, many of the conservative Christian home-schooling leaders who had previously praised her turned on her, unleashing a battery of harassment that some have described as distinctly un-Christian.

Seelhoff filed a successful lawsuit against Welch, Harris and Mary Pride, who publishes another prominent conservative Christian home-school magazine, Practical Home-schooling. She was awarded $1.3 million in September 1998. Documents filed in the suit describe the following scenario:

Alleging that Seelhoff had committed adultery with her now-husband Rick Seelhoff, Welch informed 41 state home-school organizations of Seelhoff’s alleged “adultery and lying,” hoping to persuade groups to drop Seelhoff’s forthcoming speaking engagements. (They did.)

Pride and other conservative home-schoolers, shocked at the news of Seelhoff’s divorce, posted personal attacks on Seelhoff on several Web sites, and Pride directed an employee to spread the word among Gentle Spirit’s advertisers and encourage them to drop their Gentle Spirit ads. (They did.)

The widely circulated reports of Seelhoff’s “adulterous behavior” caused many Gentle Spirit subscribers to cancel. Finally, with Farris offering legal advice at various points, Welch, Harris and Seelhoff’s former pastor tried to force her to sign a “proof of repentance” that would have her reconcile with her estranged husband; hand over her magazine and bank accounts; cease public speaking; give up her phone, post office box and online service; and never leave the house alone. Bereft of income and unable to give subscribers their money back, Seelhoff sued under antitrust laws.

HSLDA’s response to members inquiring about the Seelhoff suit was simple: “We would simply refer people to 1 Cor. 6:1-10,” wrote Farris. Good Christians, he added, are biblically prohibited from suing other Christians. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 6:1-10 begins with the question “When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints?” and ends with “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers — none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

John Holzmann is another stalwart Christian who felt the righteous rage of HSLDA when he asked its leaders to respond to issues raised by Seelhoff, the HEM report and many customers of the Christian curriculum publishing firm he co-founded, Sonlight.

Sonlight materials had enjoyed great popularity in HSLDA circles and Holzmann offered HSLDA membership discounts to customers. But when Holzmann spoke up, HSLDA struck back. At a meeting with the group’s representatives, Holzmann says he got the bottom line: Don’t ever speak out against HSLDA publicly or you will face HSLDA charges of “gossip, slander and failure to observe the requirements of Matthew 18:15-17.” (“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”)

In January, Holzmann announced that Sonlight would dissociate from HSLDA, and he left his exclusive home-school group for an inclusive group.

HSLDA does have a reputation for silencing the opposition, relying on a well-organized membership network to make its demands known. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., found that out when introducing a measure in 1994 that would require that teachers be certified in the subjects they teach. Home-school groups were satisfied that the measure would not apply to home-schoolers and advised HSLDA not to pursue it, but HSLDA leaders sent out instructions to oppose the bill on the grounds that it might be interpreted to mean that home-schooling parents need to be certified as well.

The call to action brought a barrage of phone calls and faxes that shut down Capitol Hill phone lines for days. The vote was 435-1 against the certification proposal. Not one representative other than Miller wanted to risk the wrath of HSLDA, illustrating an intimidation factor that critics say further allows HSLDA to dominate on the issue of home schooling in state and national forums.

HSLDA is open about its wish to stay in control of the debate on home-schooling issues. The group asks its members, including older children, to learn how to lobby. The group sponsors regular conferences for members that teach tactics and include legislator visits. In 1990, HSLDA created the National Center for Home Education, with its “two-punch” program that trains legislative directors for each state and volunteers for each district to respond to HSLDA alerts about proposed legislation or regulation with faxes, phone calls, e-mails and visits.

And this fall, HSLDA launched Patrick Henry College with the primary goal of training conservative, fundamental leaders who will work for legislators and think tanks to enact change. The college’s mission, according to spokesman Rich Jefferson, is to “promote practical application of biblical principles while preparing students for lives of public service, advocacy and leadership.” Government is the only subject in which Patrick Henry students can major thus far, and government-related internships are mandatory. Farris promises that grads will work to ensure “the proper, God-given roles in society of church, state and family.”

With its own college, lobbying group and research center, the HSLDA is a juggernaut that other home-schoolers will have a hard time matching. “No one has the energy to compete on their scale,” notes Laura Derrick, spokeswoman for the National Home Education Network, who helped set up NHEN in part to provide information alternatives to HSLDA. “We home-school because we want to help our kids learn, not pursue an ideological agenda.”

Nonetheless, home-schoolers have done much in recent years to expand options for those who are not enamored of HSLDA home-schooling goals. In the past several years, inclusive organizations have blossomed, and national and local networks of inclusive groups have flourished, using the Internet to post a wealth of home-school resources and contacts, including those offered by exclusive groups.

And home-school pioneers are quick to note that home-schoolers have been scrappy and resourceful in their own defense from the start, solving problems that threaten their right to teach at home by working locally in coalitions. “A lot of problems you can simply solve with a letter or phone call or visit to a legislator,” says Hegener, the Home Education Magazine founder, who with his wife, Helen, has home-schooled six children since the 1970s. “And legislators tell me that they listen a lot more to local home-schoolers whom they’ve known over the years than some lawyers coming in from out of town.”

Advocates like Derrick hope the increased visibility of inclusive groups will allow the media and public a chance to consider home schooling in all its diversity. That diversity, she notes, isn’t yet reflected in much media coverage, which tends to be based on HSLDA statistics, such as its research institute’s finding that 85 to 90 percent of home-schoolers made the choice to teach at home “based on religious convictions.” The NHERI’s survey sample? Some 1,600 HSLDA members.

The press also covered extensively a report released last year by a University of Maryland education professor and funded by HSLDA. It concluded that the vast majority of home-schoolers are white, fairly wealthy and motivated by Christian beliefs. The survey respondents, recruited with assistance from HSLDA, were all home-schoolers who bought testing services and curriculum from the conservative Bob Jones University.

Reporters may not know that HSLDA and other exclusive state organizations rarely refer journalists (and of course, any interested home-schoolers) to inclusive groups. Perhaps that’s why most home-school features focus on conservative Christian families. As recently as last month, a reporter for a national newspaper was able to get a contact for an inclusive group only by repeatedly pressing the point and demanding to speak to another person at HSLDA.

This may be the HSLDA’s most powerful advantage — a strong foothold in the press. As long as a stereotype about home schooling persists in the public eye, many frustrated parents will shy away from an education option that has paid off for thousands of children. “People, especially those contemplating home schooling, need to know that home-schoolers come from all different walks of life, home-school for a million different reasons and have a lot of fun and success doing it,” says Derrick. “We all suffer when we don’t know about all the options.”