Homeschooling the Right: How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State 9780231548014

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HOMESCHOOLING THE RIGHT

HEATH BROWN

H O M E S C H O O LI N G T H E R IG H T How Conser vative Education Activism Erodes the State

Columbia University Press / New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2021 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brown, Heath A., author. Title: Homeschooling the right : how conservative education activism erodes the state / Heath Brown. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022262 (print) | LCCN 2020022263 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231188807 (hardback) | ISBN 9780231188814 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780231548014 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Home schooling—United States. | Education—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Conservatism—United States. | Education and state—United States. Classification: LCC LC40 .B77 2021 (print) | LCC LC40 (ebook) | DDC 371.04/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022262 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022263

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee Cover art: Lev Kropotov © Shutterstock

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1 1 . A T H E O R Y O F C O N S E R VAT I V E F R E E D O M POLICY FEEDBACK 22 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOMESCHOOL POLICY 49 3. DESIGN OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY 81 4. THE PILLARS OF HOMESCHOOLING 102 5 . H O M E S C H O O L I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L F E E D B A C K A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N S 116

CONTENTS

6 . S TAT E A N D L O C A L M O B I L I Z AT I O N A N D POLICY CHANGE 137 7 . P O L I T I C A L B E H AV I O R A N D C O M M U N I T Y E F F E C T S 157 CONCLUSION 187

Acknowledgments Appendix

201

Notes

207

Index

233

vi

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HOMESCHOOLING THE RIGHT

INTRODUCTION

I

N 20 16 , C ENTR A L Elementary School, in Haywood County, North Carolina, was the county’s oldest public school, having opened in 1950. Central educated more than two hundred children each day. But declining enrollments from a rise in homeschooling, as well as from local residents leaving the rural county, had left seats at public schools open and budgets decimated. Following a 6–2 vote of the local school board, Central was shuttered and students were relocated to nearby schools, saving $520,000.1 Across North Carolina, homeschooling and charter schooling have been on the rise, with over 100,000 students being homeschooled in 2015. In Haywood County, the number of homeschoolers almost doubled in ten years, meaning that nearly 1,000 students were educated at home instead of in public schools as local officials had planned.2 This increase had a dramatic impact on local budgets because it reduced the school funding received from state and federal governments; it also had potentially long-term effects on the social fabric of the community, once closely associated with neighborhood public schools like Central. A common misperception is that home-based education creates isolation; in fact, homeschoolers operate in a robust civil infrastructure that parallels the public school system. For example, although their kids could not easily access the public school arts program, a homeschooling family

INTRODUCTION

in Haywood could enroll in a ceramics class at Deep Young Academy, an educational nonprofit organization established in 2008 specifically for the county’s homeschool families. Homeschool parents in need of further support could visit Grace Baptist Church on Monday evenings, where Acting on God’s Authority as Parent Educators (AGAPE) organized weekly mentoring sessions. Or, for $25, they could join the Haywood Christian Homeschool Association to receive a monthly newsletter with additional information. If these parents worried about abiding by state education rules, rather than contacting the local Parent Teacher Association (PTA), they could call North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE) and the organization’s law and policy director could explain the state’s regulations and how the organization was aggressively lobbying the legislature in Raleigh. In this rural part of North Carolina, homeschoolers had created an parallel civil infrastructure, entirely independent from the public school system and supportive of a very different vision for the community. Haywood’s turn to homeschooling was minor compared to similar changes in other parts of the state. In 2016, there were over 11,000 homeschoolers in Wake County, nearly 9,000 in Mecklenburg County, and over 4,000 in Guilford County. Homeschooling was transforming the educational landscape in communities across the Tar Heel state. North Carolina was also not unusual: there were approximately 2 million homeschooled students in the United States in 2016, including nearly 100,000 students educated at home in Florida, 33,000 in Virginia, and 20,000 in both Oregon and Washington. While the numbers remained small in comparison to overall public school enrollment, homeschooling, along with school vouchers and charter schooling, emerged as an important component of education policy in states across the country. In each of these states, as in Haywood County, a similar array of civil society organizations formed to support the educational, social, and political needs of homeschooling families, all running parallel to existing civic institutions. These recent events build on decades of policy development, all preceding the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting national emergency experiment with homeschooling. Home-based learning has a long history in the United States, though the more recent debate over homeschooling refers to

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homeschooling laws passed in the 1980s and early 1990s, the result of a coalition of interests opposed to various aspects of traditional classroom-based public education.3 The rise of Reagan-era conservative politics coincided with this turn in education policy at the state and local levels, ushering in several decades of school choice policy making. Once they were enshrined in state laws by political events, homeschool policies and homeschoolers created their own politics, a politics that has not been contained in the home or limited to education. This is what makes homeschooling different from other educational causes, such as charter schooling, a comparison I use throughout the book: to a greater extent than other issues, homeschooling has not remained an isolated policy issue but has created its own set of selfsustaining organizations that have changed politics. As in North Carolina, the impact of homeschooling has been borne by the larger community. For example, as Central was closing in Haywood County, the local public library created a new collection of learning materials targeting homeschoolers, paid for by a federal grant.4 Close by in West Virginia in 2017, the president of the local school board decided to homeschool her children, causing a political uproar and calls for her resignation. In New Hampshire, the newly elected governor in 2016 appointed Frank Edelblut, a business consultant and venture capitalist who had homeschooled his seven children, as the state’s commissioner of education. And in the nation’s capital, after promising to advance homeschooling to garner the support of Christian conservative voters, President Donald J. Trump named Betsy DeVos, a longtime advocate for homeschooling (and other forms of school choice), his first secretary of education. In 2016, homeschooling did not need to replace the traditional classroom for homeschoolers to alter the status quo at the local, state, and federal levels of government. Long before these recent events, homeschoolers had created the necessary political infrastructure and supportive attitudes in the public to make this ascension possible. While this book is about homeschoolers specifically, it is also about the larger conservative political movement of the last thirty years in the United States. How significant is homeschooling, compared to the pro-life or gun rights movements, in understanding this period of political development in the United States? Since homeschoolers are

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INTRODUCTION

overwhelmingly white and not poor, and since a significant portion live in rural areas, how much does homeschooling reveal about the politics of the white working class during this time period? The book is also about how policy ideas, political movements, and public attitudes interact over decades to shape political institutions and electoral outcomes. To what extent can libertarian and conservative Christian ideas about the proper functions of government and the state be connected to social movements such as the homeschool movement, the development of democratic institutions, and the election of candidates for office? At its core, the book is about shared government services that have been purposefully relocated from the public square into family living rooms, gated communities, and private spaces. How has this change in the nation’s status quo altered the political lives of those directly and indirectly involved in homeschooling?

CHARACTERISTICS OF HOMESCHOOLERS Much of homeschooling happens in private, frustrating the common methods we use to observe other forms of education. For example, homeschool policies preclude the standardized counting applied to public schools, including charter schools. It is rare that anyone measures how many homeschooled third graders are reading at grade level or how many homeschool teachers are certified to teach. Moreover, state policy variation makes comparisons across states tricky: a child who is counted as a homeschool student in Vermont may not be counted as one in Texas, where homeschools are considered to be private schools. Counting has been politicized and contentious, and some of the best research on homeschooling has been conducted by a prominent research organization that is closely tied to the homeschool movement, the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI).5 NHERI and its president, Dr. Brian Ray, have produced extensive social science research on homeschooling, though some critics argue that the

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research uses poor sampling methods.6 Nevertheless, NHERI research provides information about broad patterns of homeschooling, if not causal relationships between homeschooling and outcomes.7 In the 1970s, prior to the passage of homeschooling policies and laws, researchers estimate that there were fewer than 20,000 children homeschooled, though it is likely there were many more who weren’t captured by the survey. By 1999, the Department of Education estimated that there were 850,000 educated at home, 1.7 percent of the total school-age population in the United States (figure 0.1). Two decades later, in 2016, that share had increased to 3.4 percent, and approximately 1.8 million students were homeschooled, fewer than the number of students in private schools (close to 6 million) and charter schools (3.1 million), but double the Christian private school enrollment.8 Charter school enrollment has grown almost as quickly, but until the 2000s it trailed homeschooling enrollment growth.9 Once states adopted laws to permit charter schools to form in the early 1990s, it took time

2,000 Number of homeschooled students ages 5–17 (thousands)

1,800 1,600 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1999 FI GU RE 0. 1

2003

2007

2012

2016

Growth of homeschool and charter school enrollment since 2000

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INTRODUCTION

for people and companies to apply and receive the charter to open new schools. In 2000, there were approximately 400,000 charter school students. By 2006, there were an estimated 1.2 million. And by 2016 that number had nearly tripled to 3.1 million.10 Over that period, charter school enrollment grew as a share of overall student enrollment, from 2 percent to 7 percent. As a population, homeschoolers are different from charter school students; however, when I interviewed leaders of homeschool organizations, they stressed the diversity within homeschooling. One local homeschool leader said: “Homeschooling is a radical life choice. A family doesn’t choose to opt out of the standard ‘flow’ of life without having substantive reasons . . . while people’s reasons may overlap, each family is its own story and no two families are going to give you the same answer.” Another homeschooler from the Midwest explained, If you’re looking for the ‘typical homeschooler,’ you’re out of luck. In our little local group, it is primarily evangelical Christians but we have some non-religious folks as well. The larger the region the more variety you get. But, regardless of the religious views, homeschoolers seem to identify with each other very strongly.11

From homeschoolers’ own viewpoint, then, the common thread is a commitment to educate at home, not a demographic characteristic. However, one can discern some homeschooling patterns. The typical homeschool student is white and Christian (59 percent are white and twothirds are Christian), though nonwhite, non-Christian, and secular homeschooling increased after 2010 (see table 0.1).12 Charter school statistics are markedly different. Historically, only a third (32 percent) of charter school students were white; religious affiliations of charter school students are largely unknown.13 Homeschool students typically have parents with post– high school education (69 percent) who are unlikely to be low-income or poor (79 percent nonpoor).14 A similar percentage of charter school students have parents with more than a high school education (68 percent), but a smaller majority (60 percent) are from nonpoor families.15

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TABLE 0.1 COMPARISON OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER

SCHOOL STUDENT DEMOGRAPHICS

White, non-Hispanic Nonpoor Located outside city Parents with post–high school education

H O M E S CH O O L S TU DE NTS

CHARTER SCHOOL STUD ENTS

A ND FA M I L I E S , 2 0 1 5 (% )

AND FAMILIES, 2016 ( %)

59 79 71 69

32 60 44 68

Source: National Center for Education Statistics data.

Homeschool and charter students also live in different areas. Nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of homeschoolers live outside of cities, in rural and suburban communities. In comparison, the majority of charter school students live in cities; just 44 percent live outside of cities, and these students are, for the most part, different along geographic, racial, and socioeconomic lines. Why did so many parents opt to homeschool during the 1980s and 1990s? Researchers don’t really know. But interviews with homeschool leaders give some clues about more recent parent motivations. The leader of a statewide homeschool organization in a western state told me, “Policies are pushed in public schools believed to be anti-family . . . people are pushed out of the school system, they would rather be there, but they can’t. It has become such an unfriendly environment that they just can’t be there. Especially when those institutions are undermining [our] values.”16 Survey data support this impression. Some of the most important reasons for homeschooling given to researchers in the 2016 National Household Survey were related to “other schools,” including “a concern about environment of other schools” (80 percent important and 34 percent most important) and “a dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools” (61 percent important and 17 percent most important).17 Many parents also mentioned their desire to teach about religion (51 percent important and 16 percent most important) and morals (67 percent important and 5 percent most important). A smaller percentage

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INTRODUCTION

of respondents gave other reasons: “a desire to provide a nontraditional approach to child’s education” (39 percent important and 6 percent most important); “child has other special needs” (20 percent important and 6 percent most important); and “child has a physical or mental health problem” (14 percent important and 6 percent most important). These are not mutually exclusive reasons, and we can assume that many parents homeschool for multiple reasons. Choosing to homeschool is also only feasible if at least one parent (or guardian) can forgo some portion of regular income to dedicate time to educating at home. This reality limits who can and cannot opt into homeschooling. Survey findings on the self-reported reasons for homeschooling likely underestimate certain factors in the same way studies of other school choice policies do. One important study of parental choice, by political scientists Paul Teske and Mark Schneider, shows that the most quoted reason that parents choose charter schools is “academic achievement.”18 Other research suggests that parents weigh different school characteristics in deciding on a school, including the racial composition of the school.19 Parents may not be willing to share the real reasons they make the choices they do—there may even be subconscious motivations—and standard survey methods cannot easily overcome reporting bias. To illustrate this point, economists Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen studied the patterns of how parents selected charter schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Rather than use surveys, they studied school applications, which they argued would reveal motivations that self-reported answers might hide.20 They found that simple distance issues mattered a great deal to parents, followed by academics and extracurricular activities. Other seemingly unimportant factors, such as having schools with familiar names, also seemed to draw parents. The reasons that parents choose to homeschool or enroll their children in charter schools are very likely to be different, but exactly how different we do not know. We do know, though, that the design of each policy limits who can and cannot opt in, creating two distinct populations of users of school choice policy, and very different politics.

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INTRODUCTION

THE POLITICS OF HOMESCHOOLING Policy victories are never easy, and policy advocates, even the richest, lose as often as they win.21 This regular pattern of success and failure characterizes the policy-making process in the United States, which is defined by the status quo and has strong tendencies toward incremental change.22 Not so for at least one education policy group, whose founder and longtime leader, Michael Farris, claimed in an interview, “To my knowledge, I can’t think of an occasion where we went backwards [in our goal].” He argued that his organization had been successful in “virtually all” legislative efforts over decades. One state legislative staffer agreed: “I’ve never seen a lobby more powerful and scary.”23 That most powerful and frightening organization is not the representative of a global industry or tens of millions of Americans. It does not sit on a multimillion-dollar lobbying budget or have a hundred-year history in American politics. None of what scholars typically associate with political influence can be attributed to the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)— and the larger homeschool movement—which has, since the 1980s, scared its political opponents, won legislative victory after victory, and helped build an unshakeable fifty-state civil society infrastructure. In unflinchingly advocating for the opportunity for parents to educate their children at home, free from nearly all government oversight, the homeschool movement helped create the foundation for the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. The purpose of this book is to explore this political paradox. Homeschoolers surely were not alone; many other factors contributed to PresidentTrump’s 2016 victory, including the contentious politics of gender and race relations, deep economic anxieties in key states, and a precarious media environment. Nevertheless, the homeschool movement has been remarkable in so many different ways for over thirty years that it must be on the list of explanations for the Trump phenomenon and related developments in American politics. First, homeschooling has been ideologically significant. A prominent wing of homeschoolers has been connected to the ideas of a particular version of

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INTRODUCTION

Christian thought long associated with intellectual entrepreneurs such as Tim LaHaye, Gary North, and R. J. Rushdoony.24 This part of the Religious Right emerged in the 1970s and worked in tandem with home educators to turn homeschooling into a focused and sustained ideological movement.25 While the earliest leaders of homeschooling included many nonChristian conservatives, including those associated with the progressive “free school” movement, it was the Religious Right that successfully took up homeschooling as part of a collective ideological project that rejected many aspects of the post–World War II liberal consensus and secular government in favor of a market-oriented and libertarian vision for the country.26 Illustrative of this Religious Right connection, economist Gary North, who had worked as a staffer for Congressman Ron Paul in the 1970s and later spearheaded the Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum, wrote in 1982, “So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government.”27 And Michael Farris described the expansive aims of the homeschooling movement as follows: “We will know that our home-schooling has been successful when we see real-life victories from our children. We believe that some day home-schooled young people will help reverse Roe v. Wade, stop same sex marriage, and help reestablish a strong view of the freedoms established by our Founding Fathers.”28 Much to Farris’s delight, homeschooled teens rallied for Republican Senate candidates in 2016, reporting over 600,000 voter contacts in key races—all won by Republicans—in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Missouri, through the HSLDA-sponsored Generation Joshua group. Christian schools and Christian parents free to educate their children at home with a Bible-centered pedagogy became a part of a larger antigovernment, antistate conservative political strategy. This dominant part of the homeschooling movement, though small in numbers compared to others in the conservative movement, has been big in policy impact, quickly acquiring legal rights in all fifty states and later gaining the ear of national political figures.29 Second, homeschooling has been important for party politics. Homeschooling effectively merged aspects of Christian conservatism with

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INTRODUCTION

economic libertarianism in a way that made key arguments of the Religious Right more expansive than nonlibertarian crusades against homosexuality, abortion, and pornography. Homeschooling, and perceived federal threats to Christian schools by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), also helped conservative policy entrepreneurs tied to the Republican Party, such as the New Right’s Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich, to downplay the racial dimensions of social issues and recast Christian conservatives as the victims of government overreach.30 By portraying homeschooling as about protecting the liberty of parents, conservative activists had a policy that, on its face, could attract those unlikely to support other aspects of the social agenda. This response to efforts to desegregate public schools in the 1970s, as well as to oppose sex education and prohibitions against prayer in public school, then worked to increase the number of people who could be drawn to support the idea of homeschooling, including many unlikely to support the underlying religious dogma, racial undertones, or related conservative agenda.31 It also places homeschooling in the larger historical context of party realignment of the South, though the story of homeschooling is not exclusively a feature of recent southern political history.32 To be sure, the conservative political movement within the Republican Party has been about much more than just homeschooling and is not strictly Christian in its orientation. Still, homeschooling specifically, and Christian-oriented education more generally, have advanced the Republican cause at the grassroots level more than most other policy issues since the 1970s. Moreover, as the conservative movement has largely failed to win sustained policy victories on abortion, gay marriage, and school prayer, homeschooling has become a clear and durable policy success for conservatives since the early 1980s.33 Third, homeschooling has been institutionalized. Homeschoolers have created a vast network of political and nonpolitical institutions.34 This newly formed civil society, made up of organizations to provide curricular, religious, and other social services, along with lobbying and advocacy services, permits homeschoolers to operate in a parallel educational system distinct from most elements of the public school system.35 For example, estimates suggest that there is a $1 billion market for homeschool curricula.36 This

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INTRODUCTION

growing civil society (with its active entrepreneurial wing tied, for some, to the evangelical “prosperity gospel”) has also been politically active and is easily mobilized to defend the rights of homeschoolers and related conservative causes.37 Local homeschool organizations participated in the grassroots mobilization of conservatives in the 1960s, which was based on the staunch anticommunism of the John Birch Society (and lesser-known anticommunist Christian groups such as the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and the Church League of America); then in subsequent decades homeschool organizations became involved in social issues such as abortion, gun rights, and education.38 This new direction in conservative civil society also allowed homeschoolers and their hundreds of grassroots organizations to withstand the closure of prominent Christian conservative national groups in the 1980s, such as the Moral Majority, the Freedom Council, and the American Coalition for Traditional Values, as well as the decline of other conservative civil society organizations such as the Eagle Forum. Fourth, homeschooling has become politicized and made integral to election outcomes. In establishing this parallel educational system, homeschoolers have increased their political influence. This outcome is best illustrated by the devotion of numerous prominent candidates for the White House, such as Governor Mike Huckabee in 2008, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in 2012, and Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump in 2016.39 In the Washington Post, conservative leader Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a board member of the National Rifle Association, placed homeschoolers on the top of his list of important voting blocs for Republicans to win in order to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.40 Research shows that homeschool parents are more likely to attend a protest than other parents.41 Even though the number of homeschoolers remains a fraction of the total enrollment of students in U.S. schools, homeschoolers maintain substantial influence over education policy, as well as other seemingly unrelated social and economic policy realms. As a result, the long-term durability of homeschooling forged many of the political institutions, strategies, and tactics that made the conservative school choice movement, the Tea Party, and later Donald Trump so successful. The educational significance of homeschooling has been widely

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INTRODUCTION

debated, but the political significance is much clearer.42 Would the creation of hundreds of charter schools in nearly every state in the country been as likely without the homeschool movement? The nation’s first charter school law, passed in Minnesota in 1991 based on a similar theory of parental choice, came after homeschool laws had passed in thirty-two other states in the 1980s. Furthermore, the Tea Party that emerged in 2009, three decades after the start of the homeschooling movement, drew on a similar ideology, similar political tactics, and many of the same leaders.43 Donald Trump, too, gathered support from many of the same voters who expressed deep distrust of government-run institutions, including public schools, voiced concerns that their traditional values had been overtaken by secularists, and had other fears about societal changes related to race, ethnicity, and gender. Speaking at the Values Summit during the 2016 campaign, Trump said that in “a Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended,” adding that his civil rights agenda would focus on school choice so that “parents can home-school their children” in addition to using private, religious, charter, or magnet schools.44 The link between the homeschooling movement and Donald Trump’s presidency is not precisely causal or linear, and the homeschooling movement has not succeeded in overturning traditional classroom education. Rather, homeschooling is a lens through which we can better understand a number of aspects of the past thirty years that culminated in the election of Donald Trump. To understand the role of homeschooling, several paradoxes must be reconciled. Most interestingly, Michael Farris, the founder of the HSLDA mentioned earlier, came out against then-candidate Donald Trump. Far from a solid supporter of Trump’s campaign, Farris originally backed Senator Ted Cruz and expressed deep concerns about Trump even after he won the Republican nomination. Another leader in the homeschool movement, David Barton, ran the multimillion-dollar super PAC backing the Cruz campaign. Despite these nonendorsements and the skepticism of many Christian conservative voters, the fertile soil that Farris, Barton, and others had tilled over three decades in politics did not bear fruits for Ted Cruz, the Christian conservative icon, but rather for the upstart former Democrat

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INTRODUCTION

from New York City. It was Trump who became president and Trump who won a larger percentage of white evangelical voters than Mitt Romney (2012), John McCain (2008), or George W. Bush (2004).

T H E T H E O R Y O F PA R A L L E L P O L I T I C S The story of the homeschooling movement is not an isolated one. What has happened for homeschoolers since the 1980s is indicative of a larger political phenomenon that I call parallel politics. In four political arenas— party politics, policy making, government services, and civil society—the last thirty years have been defined by the emergence of parallelism, embodied by homeschooling.45 Homeschoolers have not been alone in seeking to move away from the public sphere of publicly provided and tax-funded government services.46 Over the same time period, families have moved in record numbers (a 53 percent increase between 2001 and 2009) away from common neighborhoods and into private gated communities—from public parks to private playgrounds.47 There seems to be a rise in secluded religious communities, such as the Bruderhof communities, and an increased popularity of the orthodox lifestyle associated with the ideas behind the popular book The Benedict Option.48 Militias have formed across the country aiming to provide security services separate from local and state police and claiming public lands for private use. Groups like the Minutemen Project, which is comprised of private individuals not associated with the Department of Homeland Security, patrol along the U.S. border to prevent people from entering the country. This parallel politics has not been limited to the emergence of separate public services; it has also been expressed in policy making itself. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in the 1970s by prominent conservative activists, matured into a force in the 1980s and 1990s based on the premise that the legislative function of government could be done elsewhere.49 Supported by ample funding from business interests, ALEC has mastered the practice of writing “model legislation” for sympathetic

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conservative legislators. Often lacking the government staff time or expertise, legislators can turn to ALEC for the precise wording of a new policy to advance their conservative views. ALEC thus operates as a powerful political player running parallel to state legislative activities, performing the lawwriting function of government. Similarly, political scientist Steven Teles described the parallel legal movement developed by the Federalist Society in the early 1980s.50 In order to challenge what certain legal theorists deemed a liberal bias in legal education, conservatives formed the Federalist Society to develop a cadre of lawyers influenced by newly formed organizations at U.S. law schools. This legal training would run parallel to, and in conflict with, the mainstream training a student would receive in law school. We can also observe this parallelism in respect to civil society and party politics. The Tea Party, which emerged in 2009, did so through a combination of Washington-based outreach via the Fox News network and large campaign contributions to candidates for office, as well as through considerable grassroots activism. Nearly one thousand organizations formed across the country in just a couple of months, a remarkable feat.51 Not all of these organizations grew from the grassroots; indeed, some shared histories with the Koch brothers–backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which also flourished during the 2000s in a majority of American states. Nevertheless, many of these new Tea Party groups were formed by homeschoolers, in the same communities in which homeschooling had been on the rise for over a decade. Based on the formation of these Tea Party groups across the country, a parallel party politics emerged that was not exactly a third political party or a party faction, but instead a quasi-party that ran parallel to the Republican Party. This quasi-party frequently challenged Republican candidates for office and Republican orthodoxy on policy issues, such as immigration (it was hostile to nearly all forms of immigration while Republicans were largely supportive of most forms of legal immigration), trade (it was suspicious of trade and international agreements, many negotiated by Republicans), and education (it was strongly opposed to the Common Core curriculum while many Republicans were for it).

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INTRODUCTION

Each of these parallel features of the last thirty years of American politics can be tied to the election of Donald Trump and associated with characteristics of the homeschooling movement. Parallel politics, then, is not a total retreat from the public square. It is not a utopian dream to forge an entirely distinct society, as one might assume from a distance. Rather, the parallel politics that I describe in this book is at once free from, and yet also closely tied to, more conventional politics. Homeschoolers have been educated in their living rooms, but they have not remained secluded at home; in fact, they have been well integrated into a purposeful and specific political project to wrest control of the public square away from their adversaries. In order to understand why a movement that has always been small in numbers and resources has had so many positive political outcomes, we can look to a pattern of positive policy feedback.52 Briefly, the internal attributes of homeschooling policy have shaped subsequent political outcomes at the individual and societal levels. Small-scale homeschooling policy victories during the 1980s resulted in relatively few families shifting education into their homes; the vast majority of students remained enrolled in public schools. However, in the absence of government-provided educational services, homeschooling policy provides incentives for families to build brand new institutions to support their home-based education needs, such as the need to buy textbooks, find curricular material, and provide athletic activities. These institutions have made homeschooling feasible, but they have also transformed the beliefs of some families. Research has shown that some parents who began homeschooling for practical reasons became much more ideological and conservative over time as they interacted with other strident homeschoolers.53 Others have questioned whether the customized nature of homeschooling—that is, parents picking and choosing every detail of their children’s education rather than the community choosing through public institutions—fosters a particular consumer mentality in homeschooled students rather than a democratic or pluralistic mentality.54 Individuals who take part in homeschooling are likely to be changed by the experience of

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operating in a parallel political system: they are more likely to support a new civic organization, more politically engaged, more conservative and libertarian, and more aligned with market-based ideologies. As a result, and if the theory of policy feedback holds, they may also be more likely to turn out on Election Day and support cuts in expenditures on public schools and other local services. There may also be spillover effects to others in communities with large and growing homeschooling populations. These individual-level feedback effects have not been incidental or merely the result of the daily necessity of teaching children at home: they are also a part of a larger political strategy. Gary North argued: “Our task is to build, step by step, institution by institution, an alternative to humanistic civilization. It will be a decentralized alternative, but it will have a head, Jesus Christ.”55 In a process of policy feedback, initial policy victories triggered the growth of institutions and supportive political development that would later cement and expand homeschooling policy monopolies as well as related policy issues. As Farris claimed at the start of this chapter, homeschoolers have never gone backwards, and this is in part because homeschooling policy has transformed democratic politics. As a consequence, homeschooling successes have not been isolated to single localities and have resulted in durable political institutions; moreover, homeschoolers maintain considerable influence over many aspects of American politics. The homeschooling movement is not just about the freedom of some families to educate at home; its meaning and impact have to be understood in a much broader historical, political, and democratic context. Frequent policy successes and effective lobbying over thirty years have resulted in a steadily growing percentage of Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, who support the right to educate at home. To be homeschooled—like living in a gated community, joining the Tea Party, or voting for Donald Trump—has not meant living at the fringes of American politics. In actuality, the parallel politics that has defined American politics since the 1980s—the rise of homeschooling, ALEC, and private militias— shows that what has appeared marginal or even hidden from sight has had a great impact on mainstream politics.

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OUTLINE OF THE BOOK Following the introductory chapter, and to better understand the homeschooling movement, I develop a theoretical framework in chapter 1 to explain the rise of conservative freedom policies and homeschooling policy. This framework fits into what I call parallel politics, a concept that explains how homeschooling and other related political movements have risen to dominate conservative politics since the 1970s. The framework draws on ideas from the political science literature on policy feedback, state policy diffusion, and historical institutionalism. Next, I connect this theory to the intellectual roots of homeschooling in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Chapter 2 explores the origin of the idea of homeschooling, connects that idea to other aspects of the conservative intellectual movement, and explains the larger historical moment in U.S. politics from which homeschooling and charter schooling originate. I rely on a close reading of key documents from intellectual leaders of the homeschool movement. I also discuss historical material on the larger libertarian and Christian conservative movements, material that is tied to the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s. On the foundation of this evolving and growing civil society, advocates for homeschooling could pursue a parallel state policy agenda, initially aiming to make homeschooling legal and then later to ensure that local, state, and federal regulators remained disconnected from home-based education. The efforts of advocates to stave off government regulation and spending fit with related state policy efforts in other realms of education—such as charter schooling—and other social and economic policies. Ultimately, what matters to homeschooling policy is how effective these organizations and activists are in defending the policy against threats. Chapter 3 collects and analyzes original data on the adoption of state homeschooling laws and policies, many originating in the 1980s. These laws vary in certain aspects—state rules differ regarding required notification of intent to homeschool, adherence to educational testing, and compliance with public health rules—yet what is remarkable is the speed with which

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they spread or diffused throughout the country. In rapid succession, dozens of states legalized homeschooling and adopted specific rules to exempt homeschool parents from many state regulations. In many of these same states, following the success of homeschool leaders, advocates for charter schools and educational vouchers were successful in passing new laws. Once these laws were enacted, homeschool families had new educational and noneducational needs, and several national organizations formed to help. Chapter 4 describes the formation and activities of these key organizations, including the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). These organizations flow from the particular design of homeschool policies. Moreover, homeschooling policy differs from other school choice policies in the way that organizations talk about the issue. Chapter 5 compares the communications or outside lobbying of several homeschool organizations with the efforts of several prominent charter school organizations. The findings of the chapter suggest that a different approach is used to frame homeschool policy, whose intellectual leaders and national homeschool organizations emphasize individual freedom and liberty rather than a market-based approach to education. How policy is framed is another dimension of policy feedback. In chapter 6, I show that homeschooling owes its remarkable success not just to the individual decisions of hundreds of thousands of families to educate at home or to national interest groups, but also to the new institutions and organizations homeschoolers have built to make this possible. These state and local organizations are a type of policy feedback. The creation of a parallel civil society to support homeschooling made the day-to-day education of children at home feasible because families had curricular, athletic, social, and policy advocacy support readily available. This robust and brand new civil society—as of yet measured imprecisely by researchers— also served to advance the larger political aims of conservative leaders, who could depend on an organized and easily mobilized constituency. I collect and analyze original data on national, state, local, and virtual homeschooling organizations in all fifty states to demonstrate the patterns of homeschooling civil society growth. The growth in the number of homeschoolers, homeschool organizations, and friendly homeschool policies is a remarkable part of this phenomenon.

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However, the durability of homeschooling and the growing significance of homeschooling to larger aspects of U.S. politics are due to positive policy feedback. For example, the politics of the 1970s resulted in certain homeschool policies in the 1980s. Yet, by the 1990s and early 2000s, which scholars see as the high point of the Religious Right movement, the particular qualities of homeschooling policy, which vary across and within states, had transformed politics more generally.56 In chapter 7, I demonstrate this policy feedback dynamic and test the theory of parallel politics by collecting data on individuals and counties. I apply concepts of how connected individuals are to public policy devised by political scientists Joe Soss and Sanford Schram, and I argue that homeschoolers, despite the apparent retreat to their homes to educate, actually transform local and state politics.57 In this way, homeschooling is best viewed as a parallel politics rather than a separate and distinct politics. Like a highway with a service road, homeschoolers have traveled apart from the traffic of the public sphere, but they have maintained regular opportunities to merge back in when they deem it advantageous to get where they want to go. Through a process of triangulation, I gather evidence on the political beliefs of homeschoolers, homeschooling enrollment at the county level in selected states, and county-level voter turnout and Tea Party activism. Homeschool parents may opt to educate at home because of existing notions about government, but these views may be hardened and strengthened as a consequence of this choice. The Tea Party mirrors the homeschool movement in ideology, leadership, and key elements of institutional strategy.58 I show some of the ways that the Tea Party is closely tied to the homeschool movement. In the Conclusion of the book, I examine what these findings on the homeschooling movement mean for larger questions about democratic politics, political organizing, and the conservative movement. This chapter places the findings of the book into the context of ongoing theoretical debates within political science about policy feedback, including the power of political ideas in designing policy, the importance of policy change as a

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driver of political change and transformations of democratic practices, and the ways that political movements evolve over time. Finally, I show how the success of homeschoolers can offer lessons for other movements, including those on the political right and left. The book ultimately informs wider discussions of the rise of Donald Trump and the impact of Trump on public policy and politics.

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1 A THEORY OF CONSERVATIVE FREEDOM POLICY FEEDBACK Prior to the last two years, the homeschool community was totally separated from the public schools. Administrations saw the home school families as depriving them of students and as such made it difficult to have any relationship with them. — P R E S I D E N T O F A H O M E S C H O O L A S S O C I AT I O N I N T H E S O U T H 1

T

opt out is not taken lightly by any family. Opting to reside in a gated community, save for retirement on one’s own, or educate children in the home comes with enormous risk and uncertainty. As the epigraph to the chapter suggests, a community of former neighbors and friends may grow hostile when citizens act on new freedoms. Given these stakes, it is worth exploring in more detail freedom policies: a subset of conservative policies based on individual choice and rights. Exploring the idea of conservative freedom policies will also solve a central puzzle of homeschooling: how this relatively small group of parents and children has had such an outsized influence on politics. For participants in a form of education that remains at the margins in most communities, homeschoolers have lobbied remarkably successfully against policy change. They have shaped adjacent conservative movements and mobilized consistently for Republicans in elections. The reason for this success lies in the theory of policy feedback: how the enactment of a policy affects the politics of the individuals who opt in, how it affects concerned interest groups, and ultimately whether the policy endures over time. State homeschooling policy has transformed the specific community of those who choose to homeschool and the groups that advocate on their behalf. It has also changed the larger communities in which H E D EC I SI O N TO

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homeschooling has thrived. But the transformation of these two groups— homeschoolers and their local communities—has differed. Homeschooling has been transformed into a political identity, one with a rich array of new political organizations in place to defend homeschooler interests. Meanwhile, in some parts of the country where homeschooling has flourished, the town or state has suffered. Homeschoolers have departed public institutions, taking with them vital social and political capital and leaving a crater in their place. This is no accident. Nor is the pattern restricted to homeschooling. Rather, a set of specifically designed policies have been integral to the conservative movement and the Republican Party since the 1970s.2 These policies have created a parallel politics that undermines existing political institutions, threatens democratic accountability, and wrests political power away from Democrats and the largely secular social welfare state. In this way, homeschooling is different from school choice policies like charter schooling, which have not generated the same feedback effects. Homeschooling is similar to freedom policies like gun rights, attempts to reform Social Security, and private neighborhoods, which were designed to generate exactly the same policy feedback effects. Here we will consider a theory of conservative freedom policy feedback. We will discuss how the historical development of Republican Party politics since the 1970s, the policy design of conservative ideas, and the political effects of these conservative freedom policies have merged to form what we call policy feedback. This is not a neat story, and even the terms and definitions are fluid and constantly debated.

THE NEW RIGHT Whereas liberal policy activists have addressed inequality and market failures, conservatives since the 1970s have focused on supposed government overreach and the violations of individual freedoms, especially the freedoms of their ideological allies.3 Despite a populist turn linked with the rise of

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Donald Trump and a handful of favored government programs, much of the conservative agenda has simply been to oppose policy and government action of any sort. To fully understand the significance of these conservative freedom policies, we must explore a longer historical, political, and partisan story. That history begins in the 1960s, with asymmetric partisan polarization (unequal divergence of parties toward ideological extremes), the strategic reframing of religious values, and enormous sums of money. For several decades after World War II, there was a broad “bipartisan consensus” on what counted as effective government and public policy. The parties may have disagreed at the margins about the size of government and the details of regulation, but they agreed that a growing economy and stable society depended on government policies to make this happen. Special interests, from business to labor, agreed with a common framework of governance that supported social welfare programs for retirement and public housing and the public regulation of many aspects of the economy. Through the early 1960s, the two parties maintained a loose ideological mix of conservatives and liberals, bound by weak regional concentration, tradition, and conflicting views on issues like race. In the 1940s and 1950s, academic and party leaders recognized the limitations of this low level of partisan polarization and steered toward more coherent ideological partisan positions and clarity on public policy.4 The rising influence of the civil rights movement and organized labor pushed the Democrats toward stronger support for civil rights, forging a new electoral coalition firmly rooted in the programs and ideology of the New Deal.5 At the same time, Republicans shifted further (or asymmetrically) to the right and southward, picking up disaffected former Democrats who resisted the new civil rights agenda.6 At the time, there were an estimated 50 million “born-again” evangelical Christians, a potentially potent voting bloc if they could be unified and energized.7 Conveniently for Republicans, the shift of conservative Christians away from active political engagement, which had lasted for several decades, came to an end in the 1970s. It was then that conservative Christian leaders, particularly evangelicals, pushed for a more central position in national politics and an assertive role in public policy debates, believing that the direction of the country had turned against their

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interests.8 This polarization between parties, regional realignment, and politicization of evangelicals sorted the electorate and defined more clearly what it meant to be a Republican and a Democrat. For Republicans, this happened as the party oriented its agenda toward beliefs about society and the state, issues of good and evil, and views on race and gender.9 When Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater lost the election in 1964, the GOP organized around an ideology based on a strict argument about free-market capitalism, limited government, anticommunism, traditionalism, and libertarianism.10 With a more polarized and sorted party in place, the Republicans’ sharpened ideology set the direction for their policy agenda on class, race, gender, and sexuality. This refashioned—and more extreme—ideology also brought together several wings of the conservative interest group community as a rising faction in the Republican Party. Starting in the 1970s, new relationships formed in Washington through meetings of the “Kingston Group” and “Liberty Court,” both organized by leaders of the New Right. Among them were Kevin Philips, the author of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” Richard Viguerie, the cofounder of the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and Paul Weyrich.11 The New Right successfully positioned itself as a faction or an “anchoring group” within the Republican Party because of its centrality to this evolving party ideology, its ability to fundraise, and its success at mobilizing Christian conservative voters.12 The New Right was key to building a conservative coalition that included business-friendly lobbies in Washington, an emerging suburban conservatism in the Sun Belt, and Christian conservative organizations across the South, the coalition we think of broadly as the conservative movement.13 Its leaders served as intellectual brokers, connecting libertarian ideas about market competition and property rights with conservative Christian concerns about morality and the family. The ideology was rooted, if not clearly articulated, in a set of specific beliefs that favored individualism over collectivism, the family over the society, religious faith over secular values, private over public, and an unregulated economy over government regulation.14 Out of this fusion of ideas came the eventual reframing of many issues of

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faith and morality as a defense of religious and individual freedom.15 From the 1970s to the 1990s, moral arguments slowly transformed into a set of inalienable rights for gun owners, parents, and the unborn, each with their own allied interest groups. We can see this change in the shifting language of the Republican Party platform. In 1960, the words choice, liberty, and markets— were used fewer than ten times.16 And even then, when the platform referred to freedom, it was primarily in an international context referencing the Cold War. By 1980, though the platform grew considerably in length, the party moved liberty, choice, and markets to the center: “It has long been a fundamental conviction of the Republican Party that government should foster in our society a climate of maximum individual liberty and freedom of choice.”17 There were specific references to health-care choice, energy choice, and consumer choice and a mention of the importance of lowering regulations to increase individual choice. The 1980 platform invoked liberty five times and markets more than twenty times. By 2000, choice and markets were mentioned more than twenty times each and liberty eight times, while the length of the platform remained approximately the same as in 1980 (figure 1.1).18 When President Ronald Reagan spoke to a group assembled at a university in Moscow in 1988, he framed American history as the pursuit of freedom, markets, and entrepreneurship: Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. . . . It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. . . . Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority of government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious.19

For Reagan, as with many among his New Right and conservative movement supporters, freedom was a religious, economic, and democratic value. Reagan juxtaposed freedom with public authority and government, which he suggested limit freedom and the truth. Freedom, said Reagan, is “a gift from God.”

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Number of times in platform

60 Choice Market Liberty

50 40 30 20 10

19

6 19 0 6 19 4 6 19 8 7 19 2 7 19 6 8 19 0 8 19 4 8 19 8 9 19 2 9 20 6 0 20 0 0 20 4 0 20 8 1 20 2 16

0

F I GU RE 1. 1

Incidence of choice, market, and liberty in Republican Party platform, 1960–2016

The trend of asymmetrical partisan and ideological polarization persisted and embedded itself into the heart of the conservative movement and the Republican strategy, messaging, and mobilization. But missing was a wellfunded policy apparatus to translate this new conservative ideology and language into a conservative policy agenda. Conservative leaders believed that moderate and liberally oriented organizations like the RAND Corporation and Brookings Institution had been dominating advanced policy development and advising federal policy makers for generations.20 They needed competing organizations to combat this practice, attract the talent required to advance the conservative cause, and design a set of policies opposed to the welfare state and many liberal social policies. Donors supported new policy-focused groups operating within the states, such as ALEC and the State Policy Network, which joined new conservative think tanks based in Washington, like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, and new legal organizations like the Federalist Society. They coordinated to advance a conservative policy strategy connected to liberty, freedom, and markets,

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including market-constraining policies that are sometimes favored by businesses.21 The courts contributed to this trend by establishing individual political spending as a protected constitutional right, and, with some limitations, corporations became privy to many of these rights. Rulings since the 1970s eased the way for corporations and large donors to fund the conservative movement and its shared agenda: to oppose government, reduce regulation, and promote freedom and liberty.22 Polarization, reframing, and money built the incubator in which conservative freedom policies flourished. New policies around guns, housing, health, retirement, and fiscal, tax, and education policy rose up everywhere. Success for these policies has not always meant wide policy adoption, but it has meant a long-term home in the agenda of the Republican Party.

C O N S E R VAT I V E F R E E D O M P O L I C Y Out of this political development emerged conservative freedom policies that translated conservative beliefs and ideas into a legislative agenda. Conservative freedom policies are short-term political victories for conservatives, but they’re also a long-term strategy for acquiring and sustaining power through policy feedback. There are three factors to consider in explaining conservative freedom policy: (1) the extent to which the policy offers new or newly framed freedoms or choices—freedom for individuals to act in opposition to (or free from) existing government policy, (2) whether or not the policy is closely aligned with the Republican Party and ideological project of the conservative movement, and (3) whether the policy is enacted inside or outside existing institutions, or somewhere on the continuum between the two. A prototypical conservative freedom policy is designed to confer new choices, to be enacted outside of existing institutions, and to be closely aligned with the conservative movement. By policy design, what I mean is

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the specific ways policy makers use public authority to meet social goals. In the case of homeschooling, prominent conservative leaders advocated policies designed to give families the choice to educate at home rather than in a public or private school with almost no oversight by education officials. But there are a few caveats. First, this is only a definition of conservative freedom policy; it does not evaluate the authenticity of the claims made by advocates of the policy design. Many advocates of choice are deeply concerned about individual freedom. But that concern is not always genuine. The political scientist Corey Robin argues that political conservatism everywhere has long been about defending existing social hierarchies from opposing incursions, a dynamic we see in cases as diverse as the French Revolution and the civil rights era.23 Thus conservative freedom policies may be as much about opposing the advances made by social groups connected to the expanded social welfare state, such as rank-and-file employees, African Americans, and women, as about genuinely expanding freedoms. Second, these three defining factors can emerge in an array of circumstances, from transportation to security to education, and may be adopted by any level of government. Nor is this a purely partisan definition. Many of the policies within the Republican Party agenda since the 1970s have been designed in different ways: some are based on expanded federal expenditures, some are based on limiting choice and constraining open markets, and others work within existing institutions, such as farm subsidies and defense spending. Neither are Democrats precluded from advocating for conservative policy design, but when they do, they are unlikely to prioritize policies that align with the larger ideological project of the conservative movement, and they are less likely to do so during highly polarized periods. The last caveat is that interest groups backing certain conservative freedom policies must be resolutely conservative. Common cause on achieving narrow policy outcomes creates strange bedfellows, like the disability rights movement of the 1970s, which pushed for a new direction in federal policy based on market-based choices. This movement was supported by the New Right and by grassroots community services for disabled Americans within the New Left.24 The coalitions of interest groups backing conservative

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freedom policies, however, are likely to be dominated by groups with a similar conservative orientation and relationships to the conservative movement. Keeping these exceptions in mind, this book focuses on policies that have closely aligned with the agenda of the conservative movement since the 1970s. Though many were never enacted on a wide scale, they were significant for conservative interest groups and Republican Party leaders because they mobilized and energized members and supporters.25 In the end, the intended and unintended policy feedback effects tie these conservative policies together. And there are three variants of these conservative freedom policies: those based on the idea of choice, those based on the idea of rights, and those based on the idea of a free market. Conservative freedom policies are typically reactive, designed as an individual choice in reaction to an existing government policy. They are often a negative freedom, or a freedom from something rather than a right to something. The new choice is a reaction to a policy that has compulsory or mandatory elements or is primarily administered by a government institution with strong control over program implementation. Conservative freedom policy is designed to change this status quo so that the individual can opt out of a government requirement or opt into a nongovernmental alternative. In a paper for the influential Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, in 1980, political scientist Alvin Rabushka wrote, “There’s no reason that individuals cannot provide for their own recreational activities, education, medical care, and housing . . . each of us can make a more determined effort to install double dead bolt locks, smoke alarms, and fire extinguishers. . . . These private actions and expenditures may be more effective than spending a similar number of dollars in public police and fire programs.”26 In the short term, citizens usually do not have to make a choice. They can continue with the status quo if they prefer, whether that means choosing how to save for retirement, how to buy health-care insurance, or whether to vaccinate children. This is the typical rhetoric behind choice-based policies: that choices are voluntary. But sometimes government encourages choices by offering publicly funded vouchers that make the choice to opt out more financially feasible.27 And in the long term, the benign rhetoric of

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free choice masks another goal of these policies: to shrink or even eliminate government—and to weaken political opponents. We can see this choice-based design illustrated in federal housing policy. In the early part of the twentieth century, the government constructed and operated homes for the poor through Title I. Starting in the 1960s, federal policy makers shifted to what were called Section 8 housing vouchers, loan programs, and rental assistance, each designed to reduce the role of government by giving individuals new choices and freedoms over their housing.28 By the 1980s, housing voucher plans were seen as easier to administer than earlier policies that required the government to build public housing projects. Vouchers were likely also cheaper, though the eventual outcomes for families have been mixed.29 Nevertheless, the change in policy design from government-built and -maintained housing to government-supported choice is part and parcel of the consistent conservative argument for more individual freedoms and less reliance on government institutions. Or consider the debate about health care. In 2009, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). One of the key provisions required that individuals possess health insurance, the infamous “individual mandate.” If a citizen did not secure health-care insurance, they would be fined. Republican opposition to the mandate began as soon as the policy was signed into law.30 Though Republicans in Congress failed to repeal the ACA, conservative movement leaders developed a choice-based policy alternative.31 ALEC urged state legislators to introduce the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, which would grant state residents the freedom to opt out of the individual mandate. As written by ALEC, the policy “protects the rights of patients to pay directly for medical services” rather than acquire health insurance.32 This choice-based policy would not mandate that an individual must pay directly for medical services; individuals could still benefit from Obamacare. But the long-term goals of ALEC were to use this choice to undermine the ACA policy over time. Choice-designed policies aim to alter government policy by giving individuals a new choice about housing, retirement savings, health insurance, education, or something else. This can come in the form of financial vouchers, subsidies, or incentives.

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Conservative freedom policies are underpinned by an ideology of rights, especially new rights, or what sociologist Ben Merriman calls stateguaranteed positive rights.33 Rights-designed policies are typically based around a new or reframed constitutional right, such as the individual right to bear arms, the right for members of religious groups to practice their faith, or certain extreme views of property rights.34 Conservative views that may in the past have been justified in moral terms, like the opposition to same-sex marriage or abortion, have been reframed as claims about rights.35 Those opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, have repositioned their moral arguments to support the rights of businesses to refuse to serve gay customers.36 Opposition to abortion has been reconceived as defending the rights of the fetus or even the rights of doctors, private businesses, and religiously affiliated hospitals not to provide the medical service or other related health services, like contraception.37 Policies that confer new rights are certainly not the exclusive purview of conservatives. Liberal civil rights policies of the 1960s enabled de facto political rights for African Americans that had been suppressed by segregationist policies and practices, especially in the Jim Crow South. And collective bargaining rights for workers have long been a major feature of liberal activists. However, in many cases, the rights-based policies pursued by liberal activists have been designed to work within existing political institutions, freeing the beneficiaries to take part in formerly prohibited public services, like voting or admission to universities, or to work together through a union. Conservative freedom policies work differently. For example, the Trump administration expanded “conscience rights” to permit individuals to refuse service based on religious objectives; thus the Department of Health and Human Services permitted surgeons to refuse on religious grounds to perform gender-reassignment surgeries.38 Or take the case of education rules that require schoolchildren to be inoculated against major diseases. By 2019, seventeen states had passed policies that granted parents the right to opt out of mandatory vaccination on philosophical grounds.39 Some conservative freedom policies work within markets. These neoliberal designs seek to create or expand private markets for goods and

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services.40 Here, the status quo policy is usually provided by the government or is a highly regulated private good. The market-designed policy shifts the supply of this good from government to private companies or organizations, from privatized trash collection to air transportation to public-private partnerships for reducing pollution. Advocates of these policies work to infuse competition and promote private market forces of supply and demand by auctioning or contracting public services to private companies. In these cases, the individuals given the new set of freedoms are companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), rather than citizens, though backers of these policies would argue that citizens ultimately benefit from better service or lower cost.41 Regardless of the decision-making unit, one of the aims of the market-designed policy is to decrease the size or role of government—or simply attenuate it—by changing who can provide certain goods and services, and in theory maximize social efficiency.42

POLICIES AND INSTITUTIONS Choice policies, rights policies, and market-designed policies have this in common: they oppose a status quo policy by introducing new freedoms. But they differ in their relationship to institutions, especially governmental institutions. They may rely on existing institutions, alternative institutions, or entirely new institutions. Some conservative freedom policies work primarily within existing institutions and rules, like the federal prescription drug benefit and initial efforts to adopt individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Existing regulations bind individual beneficiaries of the policy to government and related nongovernmental institutions. Individuals who opt in will be compelled to comply with many of the same rules as others, because the policy design will waive them from relatively few obligations associated with the status quo. Government officials are integral to the day-to-day administration of the policy, monitoring who does and does not choose to participate as well as policy outcomes. And because of their reliance on public expenditures, bureaucrats will maintain oversight authority

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over these policies and will have the data to track policy costs. Consequently, this design is not a significant threat to democratic accountability. Other policies rely on designs that are implemented primarily outside of existing governmental institutions and rules. These policies aim to disassemble public institutions, strengthen nongovernmental institutions, or create brand-new institutions. This is part of what we mean by parallel politics.43 Operating outside of existing governmental institutions means different things for different policy areas. Often existing regulations and administrative burdens are eliminated, or at least waivers from them are offered—a process of deregulation—for those participating in the new freedom policy. Sometimes participants gain an exemption from mandatory licensure or certification, such that those who deliver the service will not be bound or supported by professional norms and practices. Often they do not have to report information to the government. By intentionally limiting reporting, this design can mute criticism and limit accountability, since policy makers will have little evidence of policy failure. In other cases, this may mean forfeiting specific benefits and public funding from the government, at once reducing government financial oversight and creating new private burdens for citizens. To a great extent, this design hides the policy, its beneficiaries, and its societal costs from view, effectively removing it from the sight of the government and those citizens who do not opt in. This secrecy severely limits democratic accountability to public authorities. Because the design may also increase the demand for new institutions, those who opt in are even further concealed. These new institutions are distinct from existing government institutions, meaning that individuals will come to rely on and interact with existing government institutions to a much lesser extent. This does not mean they will immediately sever all ties with government by opting into any given policy; however, regular interactions with new institutions in one part of life may lead to similar choices in the future. For example, the accepted neighborhood policy in most of the country has been private residences connected by public roads and sidewalks, located close to public parks maintained by the government, and kept safe by public law enforcement. These are the existing public institutions that

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bind neighborhoods together through the equitable provision of public goods. Since at least the 1980s, facing relatively weak and diffuse support for residential equity, some municipalities have facilitated the creation of gated communities by changing zoning rules or by giving permission and incentives to developers to build private neighborhoods, often with restricted public access and privately maintained roads.44 These communities often have private security forces and private accommodations, like pools and parks. Local residents are not required to live in a gated neighborhood, but policy makers have made the choice easier, though persistent racial prejudice may greatly limit this choice for many people. After these policy changes of the late 1970s and early 1980s, researchers estimated that 4 million Americans lived in gated communities in the 1990s, and many more lived in ungated but privately managed communities.45 The consequence of this choice is not just new neighbors. These gated communities operate differently than a conventional neighborhood, typically relying on new, private institutions. Most are governed by homeowner associations that develop private policies for the neighborhood, including rules about who can vote on private community affairs. These associations mushroomed in the final decades of the twentieth century: from 500 associations in 1962 to 300,000 by the year 2000.46 This quasi-democratic form of governance means that residents of a gated community build new attachments outside of the conventional civic relationships with elected officials, public service providers, and existing institutions, and sometimes they come together as a private community to lobby public officials.47 And this all transpires with little public disclosure, according to public administration scholar Ron Carlee: “Homeowners associations are visible to relatively few people, and the rules of engagement are not well known.”48 This is what we mean by parallel politics: conservative freedom policies operating outside existing institutions. The distinction between inside and outside existing institutions is one of degree, not of kind. Where a policy falls along a continuum of inside to outside relates to several factors, the most important two being the political power of the status quo supporters and the relative partisan alignment of the policy (see figure 1.2).

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Outside Homeschooling

Housing vouchers

F I GU RE 1 .2

Individual retirement accounts

Inside Charter schooling

Continuum of outside to inside existing institutions

First, though they may have failed to keep the new conservative policy off the agenda, if supporters of the status quo policy are well organized, they will lobby for limited exemptions to existing rules and regulations. They will use the power they hold in existing institutions to push the new freedom policy design toward the inside part of the continuum. For example, policy makers in the 1930s designed Social Security as a social insurance program administered by the federal government to address elder poverty. Social Security is a classic success story of the liberal state, demonstrating how an expanded government can solve a social problem by pooling private risks. But for many conservatives, Social Security was not a public policy victory but rather a sign of government grown too large and powerful. But immediate repeal was not feasible. Since Social Security has always had a powerful constituency to fend off direct threats—a classic case of positive policy feedback—conservatives sought an alternative path to privatize retirement security. Conservative activists designed policies in the 1970s to encourage IRAs, rather than directly limit or entirely privatize Social Security. The initial design created federally sponsored individual accounts for a narrow group of workers without access to private coverage. Only later was the policy expanded to allow saving for nonretirement expenses and corporatesponsored plans. Political scientist Jacob Hacker writes that conservative critics understood that “Social Security could only be fundamentally reformed if there existed a ‘parallel system’ of private individual accounts.”49 This strategy by conservatives initially is a complement to rather than an overhaul of existing policy, and policy changes remain inside existing institutions. Though the long-term aim may be to dismantle government

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programs, the expedient short-term approach is to simply add programs, incrementally and imperceptibly shifting citizens away from the status quo. This is part of what political scientist Kathleen Thelen calls “layering,” the process of adding new subpolicies to existing policies in order to eventually change the outcomes of the existing policy.50 Political scientist Paul Pierson suggests that layering may take the form of “the creation of ‘parallel’ or potentially ‘subversive’ institutional tracks.”51 Political scientists associate this layering strategy with the conservative ideological agenda advancing through incremental policy change—eroding the existing status quo by nurturing new institutions.52 Unlike the fierce opposition to privatizing Social Security, advocates of expanded gun rights have faced weak opposition, allowing for regular policy changes to expand individual freedom, usually implemented far outside of existing institutions.53 Gun rights policies, including concealed carry and Stand Your Ground, have made it easier to purchase, own, and use a firearm. In choosing to protect personal property with a firearm rather than relying solely on publicly provided police, the gun owner has moved into a substantially new path. The choice to purchase the gun may affect the individual’s relationship with law enforcement and government, potentially drawing the individual away from the public neighborhood and into the more privately protected domain of the home.54 While gun rights policy may not have caused gun owners to change their political attitudes, it may well reinforce preexisting feelings. They are more likely to participate in new institutions—such as visit shooting ranges, where they are surrounded by like-minded gun owners—and these non-neutral institutions will solidify beliefs about the proper limits on government. They may soon join a new civic institution, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), and may develop a particular identity as a “patriotic gun owner” based on the messages shared in NRA magazines.55 Political scientist Mark Joslyn suggests that gun owners enter into a “larger gun culture that represents a host of values that are distinctive and increasingly politicized.”56 This is the type of interpretive effect described by policy feedback scholars. The NRA has successfully shaped the identity of gun owners and also the design of gun policy. For instance, it lobbied for national gun policies that

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limited the collection of data and the conduct of research on gun-related violence.57 Adopted in 1996, the so-called Dickey Amendment severely curtailed the authority of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to advocate for gun control and restricted the opportunity to study gun violence.58 This policy change reduced the amount of information on gun policy, limiting the chance that the negative outcomes of firearms would undermine gun policy and tighten restrictions on gun ownership. By winning this exemption from CDC examination, supporters of a conservative freedom policy approach to firearms intentionally reduced negative policy feedback and threatened public accountability for gun policy outcomes. In addition to the power of advocates of the status quo, the partisan alignment of the new policy idea matters a great deal. If the policy is aligned closely with the Republican Party, the policy design is likely to end up on the outside portion of the continuum. If policy support is evenly balanced across parties, the policy design will likely fall toward the inside pole of the continuum. For example, in the case of the prescription drug policy adopted by the George W. Bush administration in 2003—a classic market-designed policy of delegated governance to third-party providers—a coalition of pharmaceutical companies, advocates for patients, and medical professionals backed the policy change. An equally broad bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans supported President Bush on the policy.59 As such, the eventual policy, the Medical Modernization Act, provided a voluntary option to seniors to choose a private drug plan, but it was designed to work within the existing framework and funding of Medicare. Interestingly, research suggests that the policy generated little policy feedback: beneficiaries pushed for few changes, despite weaknesses in the policy.60 Much of what determines the mix of partisan support for specific policies is the identity of the people the policy serves. Political scientist Jamila Michener refers to disproportionality, or the imbalance in the distribution of policy participation.61 The direction of the imbalance draws one or both of the parties: Republican attention is drawn to certain policies and Democratic attention to others. As political scientists Matt Grossmann and David Hopkins have argued about partisan sorting and polarization, the Democratic Party since at least the 1970s has been a coalition of single-issue

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groups and certain identity groups, increasingly reflecting the policy interests of women, African Americans, union members, environmentalists, and the LGBTQ community. Republicans, on the other hand, have been a coalition of ideologies, mainly social conservatives and libertarians, as well as increasingly white and rural Americans. As a consequence, though both coalitions participate in some policies, other policies are strongly associated with a single party. We can map these two factors—power of the status quo coalition and alignment with Republican Party—onto a matrix of expectations of conservative policy design (table 1.1). When there is a strong coalition backing the status quo and high Republican interest, as in the case of retirement policy and IRAs, we would expect the policy to fall in between inside and outside existing institutions, a hard-fought compromise to the middle between competing interest groups. Another case is school vouchers, a policy priority for Republicans since at least the 1970s. Democrats have favored

TABLE 1.1 PREDICTING WHETHER CONSERVATIVE FREEDOM POLICY

OPERATES INSIDE OR OUTSIDE EXISTING INSTITUTIONS S TR E NGTH O F CO A L I TI O N BACKING THE STATUS QUO PARTI S A N A L I G N ME NT

WEAK CO ALIT IO N

STRONG COA LITION

Weak partisan alignment; support among partisan mix of Democrats and Republicans

In between inside and Inside existing institutions outside existing institutions

Examples: prescription drug benefits; vaccination exemptions; charter schooling Outside existing institutions In between inside and outside existing institutions Examples: gated communities; Section 8 housing vouchers

Strong partisan alignment; support mainly among Republicans

Examples: individual Examples: gun rights; retirement accounts; school occupational licensure exemptions; homeschooling vouchers

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some types of school choice, but most have remained opposed to vouchers. The defenders of the status quo policy, including teacher unions, civil rights groups, and civil libertarian advocates for the separation of church and state, have been well resourced and organized. The result has been successful lobbying to restrict vouchers to public schools only or to just low-income or disability students, or to require participating private schools to abide by accountability regulations for public schools from which they are usually exempted.62 School vouchers give some parents a new freedom, but competing interest groups have negotiated the design of these policies between inside and outside existing institutions, ensuring public accountability checks on policy outcomes. When there is a mix of support between Republicans and Democrats, but a weak coalition backing the status quo—as is the case for policies associated with gated communities—we would also expect the policy to fall in the middle between inside and outside existing institutions, though in this case it would be the result of a partisan policy compromise. Another example is federal public housing vouchers. In 1974, a Democratic Congress and Republican president negotiated a change to the nation’s primary housing law. Recipients of federal housing support were generally low-income residents, who lacked the political influence to oppose this change in the status quo. The result of the new policy, along with several other earlier changes, was a significant shift in public housing policy from substantial federal involvement in public housing construction to a greater reliance on private housing development and the use of vouchers by landlords, along with with federal oversight.63 Despite the shift to greater housing choice, federal housing officials remained closely involved, shifting from direct provision of housing to oversight. Conversely, when there is bipartisan support and a strong coalition backing the status quo or exclusively Republican support and a weak coalition, we expect the design to fall on one of the two poles of the continuum. In the first case, where the prescription drug benefit policy falls, the coalition backing the status quo will use its power to pressure partisan allies in both parties to restrict the design within existing institutions. Another case is the push for exemptions from vaccinations, which has drawn some support

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from Republicans and Democrats but has faced a strong and organized opposition from medical professionals, the pharmaceutical industry, parent groups, and many in the public health sector.64 Rather than a blanket freedom to opt out of mandatory vaccination to attend a public school, states have adopted narrowly tailored exemptions for specific religious or philosophical reasons, placing the policies solidly within existing public health and educational institutions. And when health outbreaks have occurred, legislators have been supplied with information in order to further tighten exemption policies by requiring permission from a medical professional or proof of religious belief. The compromise at the center of this design, thus, may result in self-undermining elements of the policy, leading to a higher chance of a return to the status quo.65 In the case of gun rights and homeschooling policies, there will be limited interest-group resistance to policy change and Republicans will push for their preferred design outside of existing institutions. Another example is occupational licensure, a policy to protect consumer health and safety by requiring those in specialized fields to pass an exam or complete an educational program. Licensure binds professionals to government or to professional organizations acting on behalf of government. Conservative Republicans have typically viewed licensure as inefficient and harmful to open labor markets. While in some fields, unions and professional associations have the power to defend licensure, in many fields, like cosmetology, esthetics, and tattooing, there is no influential lobby. As a consequence, states have passed policies to exempt these fields from (or reduce) licensure requirements, freeing people to practice these trades outside the institutions of government.66 So, by giving individuals new rights or choices, conservative freedom policy design may undermine existing institutions by creating demand for new institutions, but this demand will relate to where along a continuum of inside to outside existing institutions the policy design falls. Unlike the liberal or progressive tradition of rights claims, which seek closer connections to existing institutions, such as suffrage for women and African Americans, the extreme version of conservative freedom policy detaches individuals from prevailing rules and laws. Those individuals who opt to exercise these

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rights may step out of common community institutions into a parallel set of institutions with the potential to change attitudes, identity, and behavior, potentially strengthening the policy over time. And the design of the policies limits information about outcomes, further insulating the policy from counter-mobilization and democratic accountability.

POLICY FEEDBACK If these different conservative policies simply allowed people to opt out, they would be much less interesting, but the act of opting out has affected politics. Earlier, I described the politics that precedes the enactment of conservative freedom policies (strength of the coalition backing the status quo and partisan alignment), but it is what comes next that is most interesting and least understood, and part of the reason that conservative freedom policies are so intriguing to the conservative movement and so fought for by Republicans. Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson describe public policy as the “prize” of interest groups.67 Policy is a political prize in itself, but it’s also valuable because, once won, it can shape future outcomes. Policy feedback is what transpires after a policy is enacted; just as politics makes policy, policy later makes politics.68 In political sociologist Theda Skocpol’s seminal formulation, feedback happens in two ways. First, the work of government to implement new policies can “transform or expand the capacities of the state,” and, second, new policies “affect the social identities, goals, and capabilities of groups.”69 Each dynamic can strengthen or weaken a new policy in the future. For example, consider an education policy that subsidizes prekindergarten (pre-K) education. First, it is molded by an intensive political process, shaped by competing parties and interest groups. Once it’s signed into law, it may improve early childhood development outcomes for participating students, which we call the direct outcome of the policy. But other political effects may follow, some that will strengthen the policy (positive effects)

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and others that may undermine it (negative effects).70 Perhaps a new agency may be required to implement the policy, thereby adding staff to the government with a stake in the continued existence and even expansion of the policy. At the same time, those parents newly and happily funded to attend a pre-K school may mobilize to support it. This may take the form of higher voter turnout or the formation of new civic organizations and interest groups. These positive policy feedback effects will embolden elected officials to maintain the policy. Other policy decisions, often means-tested programs will have the opposite effect: reducing the capability or willingness of some to participate in politics and the ability of groups to effectively mobilize support. These negative feedback effects may, over time, undermine the policy by discouraging elected officials from defending the policy against threats. Thus policy feedback effects can be good or bad for democracy, expanding or constricting public participation, and good or bad for policy, strengthening or undermining policy decisions. Policy feedback effects also differ based on institutions—the formal and informal rules, structures, and accepted practices of a society.71 Institutions sometimes make policy, such as when an institution like Congress legislates or an institution like a state constitution permits laws to be adopted by popular referendum. Policy can also create institutions, such as by funding the construction of a new hospital, and change institutions, such as by shifting funding from emergency care to cancer treatment. Institutions include virtual structures, like the formalized relationships that link people in a community together, and the accepted rules that establish behavioral norms. In each case, feedback effects may grow, shrink, or change direction based on the types of institutions that are involved in implementing the policy. Government institutions enact and are shaped by policy, and they transmit policy change to citizens by enforcing rules, disbursing funds, collecting information, or providing services. Feedback effects are typically conceptualized as the experiences of those directly served by the policy through institutions. Individual citizens are the usual target of policy makers. Feedback effects may also be borne by groups, such as interest groups or trade associations, that represent individual people or companies directly served by

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the policy. When groups have formed into political movements or factions, feedback effects may advance or slow the influence of the faction within a party, especially if groups can trumpet encouraging information about the successes generated by the policy. Groups may also be less politically oriented civic groups or nonprofits that provide services related to policy. These types of groups may flourish after a new policy expands its work, or fold after a new policy reduces it. Those directly served by government policy are the most likely to be affected by the policy. But others not directly engaged in the policy—policy bystanders, the mass public, and those who do not opt into the policy—may feel spillover effects. Sometimes spillovers are the economic effects of policy, such as more money flowing into local businesses following the construction of a new public train station. In other cases, policy spillover effects are political, as when citizens with neighbors who are more engaged in politics may also become more motivated to get involved in politics. For those directly and indirectly affected by policy, effects fall into different categories. The political scientist Paul Pierson divides feedback effects into two types: resource effects and interpretive effects.72 Resource effects are the ways that new policies may increase or decrease the resources available to beneficiaries, whether they are money, new services, or just more free time. A new universal pre-K policy would result in more money in the pockets of these families and, possibly, more free time. Since time and money are associated with political participation, a resource effect of the pre-K policy may be a more politically active community of parents. Interpretive effects are the ways that policy can change attitudes, including the feelings of political efficacy and common identity among beneficiaries. Those families in the pre-K program may develop stronger feelings of support for government through their positive interactions with teachers and administrators. And because the program is designed for all families, and thus may not carry the social stigma attached to many other meanstested programs, families may also develop a stronger sense of political efficacy as they witness government working in their best interest, and thus may become more actively engaged in defending the pre-K program through

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activism or voting.73 And they may come to identify with other families who benefit from the policy, forming a new identity and sense of shared fate. These policy effects on civil society and interest groups will determine whether the policy will be strengthened or weakened. Given the important relationship between interest groups and political parties noted earlier, stronger interest groups will be more influential with elected party officials, selecting candidates and supporting candidates with campaign donations and volunteers. In exchange, elected officials will advocate for the policy in the future and defend it against threats. Who will bear the direct effects is usually clear and is typically defined by the policy. Who else may be affected is less clear. Political scientists Joe Soss and Sanford Schram theorize that mass public effects are determined by the policy’s visibility and proximity.74 Policies hidden from public view, sometimes the result of cozy subgovernment policy making, are unlikely to generate many mass public effects.75 Many policies aimed to encourage or discourage behavior, like promoting home ownership or reducing pollution, are implemented through provisions in the tax code, and thus are largely submerged or hidden from view, including from those who participate in the policy. Visibility relates to salience or the level of public concern regarding the policy, since even seemingly visible policies may not draw attention. Proximity refers to whether the policy is close to or distant from people’s lives.76 A criminal justice policy to construct a new public institution in a neighborhood, like a prison or halfway house, will feel close to residents’ lives even though residents have no direct involvement in the policy, and it will generate strong, most likely negative, reactions, what we typically call a NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) response. Close proximity will make policies feel more tangible and concrete for even those not directly involved.77 Policies that are highly visible (or salient) and proximate (or close) are likely to generate the strongest effects among the mass public. Political scientists and other scholars have categorized policy effects by whether they are resource or interpretive effects and whether they are positive or negative. Policies are organized by whether the effects are borne by individuals or groups and by direct beneficiaries or the mass public. In theory there can be positive resource effects and negative interpretive effects,

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each borne by individuals or groups, both directly and indirectly affected by policy. And since parties and groups grapple over where conservative freedom policies fall along a continuum of inside to outside existing institutions, the relative visibility and proximity to the mass public of these policies should help determine policy feedback effects. Whether (and why) policy generates negative or positive effects is determined by the policy design, but most studies of policy feedback have not dealt with the conservative freedom policy design.78 Some designs rely on transfers of public resources to eligible individuals, such as food stamps for low-income families. Others create programs with which individuals can be served, such as a free public health clinic. Some designs create obligations for individuals, such as jury duty. And still others present freedoms, such as optional retirement savings accounts. In each case, policy makers have a host of different design options to meet the same broad policy goal of reducing poverty or increasing civic engagement. Feedback research has not included the full array of policy designs. Instead, much feedback research has focused on certain types of policies with similar designs and goals. Policy scholars have investigated redistributional social spending programs, including health insurance for low-income citizens, public spending on education and retirement, and support for food, income, and housing.79 These programs all share certain policy goals, such as reducing market failures and discrimination to improve social equity, and they have broadly similar redistributional designs to transfer public resources to eligible individuals or groups. They are strongly tied to the project of reformers since the 1930s to expand the social welfare state, once a major part of the bipartisan consensus about government but increasingly the basis of partisan conflict.80 In each policy case, the beneficiary of the social welfare policy, whether the person is a veteran in need of a new home, a disabled person in need of income, or a child in need of health care, is directly or indirectly tied to a government agency for delivery of the benefits. Sometimes this arrangement yields positive returns, and other times negative returns. Political scientists Amy Lerman and Vesla Weaver study the feedback effects of criminal justice policy when the individuals directly affected are

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also closely linked with carceral functions of the state.81 Based on these relationships to state institutions, there is a clear mechanism explaining why an individual’s sense of patriotism, eagerness to join a political organization, and frequency of voting may rise or fall. At the same time, the administration and implementation of these policies by government enable democratic accountability by public officials and regular policy revision in response to policy success and failure. Whether the policy distributes benefits and increases feelings of political power, like the GI Bill, or imposes limits and reduces political efficacy, like prison policy, when the different facets of policy feedback theory are brought together, there are distinct and expected patterns of policy design that lead to more or less political participation. While these studies have mapped a common set of policy designs, there is much less known about policies designed differently, particularly those that use the conservative freedom approach. The choices at the heart of conservative freedom policies are a purposeful attempt to encourage individuals to opt out of the liberal welfare state and the social policies adopted after World War II. The more people there are who opt out, the stronger the larger conservative movement agenda becomes as it wrests control away from the Democratic Party and liberal policy activists. These policies are designed primarily to transfer new rights or freedoms, not tangible resources from government institutions. The questions then are: Does conservative freedom policy generate policy feedback? And, if so, what type? The question is not whether these policies are effective in meeting their stated goals, but what happens politically after policies confer these rights, create these markets, or offer these choices. What happens to an individual’s decision to form or join an interest group? And what happens to political movements and parties if those interest groups are flush with members and resources?

*** Conservatives are often teased for habitually adding “freedom” to every issue, not just fries and toast, but also transportation, guns, health care,

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retirement, and education. But this allusion to freedom is not just rhetorical and symbolic. On the contrary, we should take these overtures to freedom seriously, especially in public policy. Because of the historical importance of freedom to Republicans and conservatives—and related ideas of choice, rights, and the market—we should pay attention to freedom policies. And special attention should be paid to homeschooling because it is the key case for studying conservative freedom policies.

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2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOMESCHOOL POLICY

I

before homeschooling policy had been adopted or accepted as legal by states across the country, long before Ronald Reagan had won the White House, and long before the founding of the Moral Majority, the seeds of the conservative movement had already fallen on the soil of West Virginia. It was in Kanawha County—the home of the state capital, Charleston, the mining industry, and a long history of labor disputes—that a debate over high school textbooks would catalyze the homeschooling movement.1 As in many parts of the country, the elected Kanawha school board approved decisions about curricula with a group of public school teachers. Before the start of the school year, one member of the board, Alice Moore, criticized the recommended texts for language arts classes, especially passages by Malcolm X from The Autobiography of Malcolm X and by Eldridge Cleaver from Soul on Ice. One section written by Malcolm X particularly incensed Moore: “All praise is due to Allah that I moved to Boston when I did. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be a brainwashed black Christian.” She argued that the material was profane, full of slang instead of proper English, and “dirty.” Others agreed: the books were “filthy” and “ungodly.”2 What began as a critique of language instruction quickly grew into a much more explicit dispute over Christianity, parenting, and race. Moore N 19 74 , L ON G

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linked the textbook decisions to the harmful influence of federal officials over West Virginia’s education. The federal Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare, she said, “does whatever it pleases. Congress doesn’t control it. The voters don’t control it. Parents have no lobby, no influence, no control over their children’s education.”3 This issue was bigger than local textbooks; it was about the political direction of the country. After collecting a petition with twelve thousand signatures opposing the textbooks, Moore lost the eventual board vote, and the book purchases moved ahead. But the issue was far from over. Through local fundamentalist churches, Moore organized families to protest the books by keeping children at home.4 In the rural reaches of the county, on the first day of the school year, hundreds of students stayed home, by some measures 20 percent of all enrolled students. The conflict had transcended a debate about schoolbooks and become a fight over the rights of parents to determine what their children learned and their power to oppose the state. It was also about geographic divisions. Much of the protest was waged in rural towns, far from the city of Charleston. For a county that had long voted Democrat, by the early 1970s this geographic divide aligned with the partisan sorting that shifted much of the South from the Democratic to the Republican Party. One of the leaders of the protests was Reverend Marvin Horan, pastor of the Fundamentalist Leewood FreeWill Baptist Church. Horan was deeply worried about what he perceived to be the outside control placed on people in the county by the courts and education officials. The textbook issue was just the latest case of mistreatment. According to Horan, “We have decided to come together and stand together until the books are removed.”5 Horan mobilized church leaders to join the protests and coordinate the formation of new, private Christian schools to educate local children without the books chosen by the public school system. In early October, things turned violent. Horan conspired with other protesters to craft sticks of dynamite to bomb several schools. Only one of the bombs exploded, at Midway Elementary School. The damage was limited, but Horan was implicated in the wider planning and eventually spent three years in prison on charges of conspiracy.6

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As Moore and Horan’s framing of the issue portended, the textbook protests did not remain a local affair for long. This was about a much larger conservative debate over the direction of the country. Kanawha became a mecca for conservative activists.7 Soon Republican Party figures from outside the state joined the fray, including Robert Dornan, then an up-and-comer who was running an organization called Citizens for Decency Through Law but who would one day become a U.S. congressman, and Illinois congressman Philip Crane. Dornan spoke at rallies in the county, some of which drew audiences as large as eight thousand, and Crane alleged police brutality against the antitextbook protesters and shared the allegations with his followers outside of the state in an appeal to raise money for their cause.8 The conflict also opened a window for a new player in national politics: the politicized research organization or “think tank.”9 A newly formed think tank in Washington, the Heritage Foundation, sent staff to West Virginia to support the protesters.10 Heritage had been established just one year earlier by Philip Crane’s former chief-of-staff, Edward Fuelner. Joseph Coors Sr., the grandson of the brewer Adolph Coors, funded it as one of the first efforts to translate a set of conservative ideas into an assertive policy movement in Washington. Connie Marshner, who had joined Heritage to direct education issues, had been traveling the country seeking out “little clusters of evangelical and fundamentalist Moms’ groups.”11 Heritage dispatched Marshner and legal counsel James McKenna, who had successfully defended some of the earliest homeschool families, to organize and provide legal strategy for the protestors.12 Marshner would become a prominent player in the New Right faction of the Republican Party, ascending to the board of the powerful Council for National Policy at its founding in the early 1980s. Heritage was not the only one to descend on Kanawha. The John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan also saw this conflict as an opportunity. In a November 1974 article in American Opinion (a Bircher magazine), John Hoar wrote, “One has to go no further than Kanawha County, which spent half a million dollars for a program in ‘Inter-ethnic’ studies that would embarrass a self-respecting pygmy.”13 Quickly, the textbook protests turned racist, and the violence escalated.14 Over a dozen sticks of dynamite were placed at the Board of Education

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building. Molotov cocktails were thrown into school buildings, and shots were fired at state police and a school bus. Fortunately, there were no fatalities. The New York Times described it as “a season of marches, parades, rallies, scuffles, shootings, fistfights, strikes, picketing, boycotts, debates, arrests, lawsuits, court orders, and angry sermons.”15 After months of violent and nonviolent conflict, the county reached a resolution on November 8, 1974. It would retain the books, but parents would be allowed, on behalf of their children, to choose whether they would read all or just some of the texts used in the classroom. This compromise, offering new choices to parents, lit a path for conservatives who opposed the decisions of public officials. If public decisions ran counter to deeply held beliefs, appealing to rights, especially parental or religious rights, was a way to opt out. Alice Moore, unsatisfied with the resolution, saw an opportunity. The New York Times reported that Moore thought the resolution didn’t “mean anything” and “parents may now be forced to educate their children in their homes [emphasis added].”16 Homeschooling, at this point, was practiced discreetly. It was illegal, legally unclear, or at least controversial in most parts of the country, including West Virginia.17 Nonetheless, Moore seemed to recognize the stakes of what was to come. Moore wasn’t alone. In 1978, Phil Suiter, sympathetic to Moore and other protesters, was elected assistant state superintendent of schools for Kanawha. With a new textbook advisory group in place and officials like Suiter increasingly wary of public backlash, Kanawha adopted a new set of books, largely avoiding the books written by African Americans that had drawn such scrutiny four years earlier. Suiter told the New York Times that the new books were chosen with the protests in mind and that “they had been very sensitive to what the public’s demands are.”18 The antitextbook protesters may have lost a battle in 1974, but they won the war.

*** Less than a decade later, Suiter was spearheading the charge to legalize homeschooling in West Virginia. He had left his position in government

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to lead an organization called West Virginians for Religious Freedom. In 1983, he pushed for Senate Bill 1984, a change in the state education law that included “Exemption K,” which would exempt students from the compulsory attendance law if state educational requirements were met by private schools, parochial schools, and “other nonpublic schools.” Homeschool advocates saw this legislative language as their opening and quickly encouraged homeschoolers to register as private schools in order to abide by the law and pursue homeschooling in practice.19 Suiter wasn’t done yet. According to one homeschool organization, he was “instrumental in bringing together homeschool families” and encouraged homeschool parents and advocates who convened in Beckley, West Virginia, in 1985 to organize into what became the West Virginia Home Educators Association. The WVHEA was an organization to support home education and parents and to establish “local support groups or networks around the state, [distribute] information considered vital to home educators, [develop] educational opportunities to help parents and others involved in home education, and [keep] fellow homeschoolers informed.”20 Suiter built the civic infrastructure to establish and defend homeschooling in the state.

*** It was not until 1987 that policy makers fully recognized homeschooling in West Virginia through an exemption to the state’s compulsory education law. As in other states, the early seeds of homeschooling policy were planted in the 1970s by grassroots activists like Alice Moore and national policy entrepreneurs like Connie Marshner. But what happened between local textbook battles in Kanawha and state policy adoption in all fifty states? And how does it show the relationship between grassroots activism, national political trends, and the development of conservative freedom policy? This chapter presents the historical development of homeschooling and charter schooling. In these key political developments behind the origin of school choice policies, we can see the early stages of feedback that preceded

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and soon followed each policy’s adoption. By reading into the distinct intentions of early policy entrepreneurs, we see how the development of these two policies differed, a difference tied closely to the eventual feedback effects of each policy over time. First, intellectual leaders within the conservative movement anticipated how school choice generally and particularly homeschools, Christian schools, and to a lesser extent charter schools could advance their interests. So-called Movement Conservatives worked in tandem with homeschool leaders to connect homeschooling and homeschoolers to larger political efforts in the evolving Republican Party. At the same time, a segment of homeschooling leaders, primarily conservative Christian homeschoolers, recognized that a close alliance with the conservative movement and the Republican Party would advance their cause. This segment eventually clipped the wings of nonconservatives in the homeschooling movement and dominated homeschool politics from the early 1990s on, insulating homeschooling from counter-mobilization. Though the conservative movement pursued many other strategies at the same time, allowing parents to opt out of public schools to educate at home was one mechanism of parallel politics and illustrates the intentional use of policy feedback to shape politics. Second, a very different political path evolved for a related school choice policy: charter schooling. Political centrism defined the development of charter school policy, a policy movement that had few of the indicators of positive policy feedback. Though the focus of this book is on homeschooling, it also deals with charter schools because the differences in the evolution and policy feedback of these two movements reveal much about recent historical political developments. Through the writings of its leaders and its organizational development, we see the strategy behind homeschooling policy design specifically and conservative freedom policy design generally. The story begins with how education policy developed from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries in the United States and how homeschooling and charter schooling became matters of policy development.

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A S H O R T H I S T O R Y O F A M E R I C A N E D U C AT I O N P O L I C Y Educating at home has a long history in the United States. Milton Gaither, a scholar on religion and education who has written some of the definitive accounts of homeschooling, points out that home-based education was the dominant form of education in colonial America. The government was largely uninvolved in schooling in the early republic. If children were taught to read at all, it was typically in the student’s own home or in the home of a neighbor.21 Thus there was not much in the way of education policy. The formal schools that slowly came into existence were mostly founded and operated by churches and private organizations to promote religious instruction. The path of education policy since the early nineteenth century has moved mostly in a single direction: toward steadily more governmental support for public schools and expanded, equitable access to common public institutions. From compulsory education laws to desegregation policies to financial equalization, legislatures have historically expanded the role of government in education. In Massachusetts in the 1830s, the Common School movement began. Massachusetts was the first state to have a board of education, and the governor appointed a Whig politician named Horace Mann to be its secretary. Mann emphasized the common purpose of schooling and free public education, open to all students regardless of religion. He worried that religious sects were using private religious schools to meet narrow sectarian goals.22 He wrote of these private school systems: “Others still are striving to break down all free public-school systems where they exist, and to prevent their establishment where they do not exist, in the hope, that, on the downfall of these, their system will succeed.”23 Mann was not opposed to the Bible or religious instruction, but he saw the denominational disputes raging between churches at the time as a barrier to the education of children. Common schools were his solution: “The sovereign antidote against these machinations is free schools for all, and the right of every parent to determine the religious education of his children.”24

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For Mann, public schools were to be community schools, open to all. He wrote: “The very terms ‘public school’ and ‘common school’ bear upon their face that they are schools which the children of the entire community may attend” and “in a social and political sense, it is a free school-system. . . . Without money and without price, it throws open its doors, and spreads the table of its bounty, for all the children of the State.”25 Mann was not naive about the controversy he would stir up by advocating for a shift from private religious schools to free public schools. He believed public schools should teach students the Constitution and government but not get embroiled in partisan conflicts. He wrote, “It will come to be universally understood that political proselytism is no function of the school, but that indoctrination into matters of controversy between hostile political parties is to be elsewhere sought for, and elsewhere imparted. Thus may all the children of the Commonwealth receive instruction in all the great essentials of political knowledge.”26 He later clarified: “But when the teacher, in the course of his lessons or lectures on the fundamental law, arrives at a controversial text, he is either to read it without comment or remark; or, at most, he is only to say that the passage is the subject of disputation, and that the schoolroom is neither the tribunal to adjudicate, nor the forum to discuss it.”27 Mann’s system of free public schools soon spread to much of the rest of the country. Starting first in 1852 in Massachusetts, states began passing compulsory education laws that required children to be educated. The framers of these laws believed that civic culture and the assimilation of new immigrants depended on common instruction. During Reconstruction in the South, states adopted constitutional provisions guaranteeing free universal public education and funding public schools for newly free African Americans.28 Though these public commitments to educational equity quickly ended, they represent a harbinger of the future fight to link public education and civil rights. By the start of the 1920s, compulsory education laws existed in all states, and the vast majority of students attended public schools supported by local taxes. Today, compulsory education laws range from state to state. In Virginia, all children from age five to eighteen must attend; at the other extreme, in Wyoming, from age seven to sixteen.29

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Local governments began operating public schools in the early 1880s, and public school enrollment soon grew. In 1889, 11 percent of students nationwide attended private schools; by 2010, this was down to 7 percent.30 As public schooling grew, public expenditures for education also expanded, funded mostly through local property taxes. In 1920, an estimated $12 billion (in 2020 dollars) was spent on education in the United States. By 2014, this number was $633 billion.31 Until the middle of the twentieth century, education was exclusively a local and state affair, with little direct oversight by the federal government. Typically, school boards were democratically elected at the local level, and the federal government had little role in the particulars of education. President Dwight Eisenhower better coordinated federal involvement in education in 1953 with the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Previous presidents had called for this reorganization but lacked the authority Congress had given to the president in 1949 to create a new department. Newly empowered, Eisenhower argued that elevating these governmental functions and the federal officials who oversaw them to a newly created federal department would “improve the administration of the vital health, education, and social security functions” because of the “importance and magnitude of these functions, which affect the well-being of millions of our citizens.”32 HEW operated as a unified agency until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter spun off the educational functions into the Department of Education.33 The creation of HEW coincided with the rise of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. In 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate was not equal, segregated schools moved to the center of debates about who was responsible for protecting the rights of all American children. Desegregation of public schools, resisted by some public officials at the local level, was ultimately advanced by a much stronger federal role in public education. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 included provisions to extend federal protections against discrimination to public schools.34 Around the same time, the courts weighed in on religion in public schools, sometimes in favor of parental freedom but often not. In a series

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of related decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that religion (almost always Christianity) was too prominent in government-operated public schools. In 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, the Court found that prayer in public schools was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.35 According to the Court, by encouraging public school students to recite the regents’ prayer, New York State was establishing a religion, and therefore violating the Constitution, even if the prayer itself was nondenominational. The Court’s rulings became a rallying point for increasingly politicized Christian groups.36 President Kennedy tried to deflect the controversy by reasoning, “We can pray a good deal more at home. . . . I would hope that as a result of this decision that all American parents will intensify their efforts at home, and the rest of us will support the Constitution and the responsibility of the Supreme Court in interpreting it.” But Reverend Billy Graham, then the face of the evangelical community, said he was “shocked” by the Court’s rulings; “80 percent of the American people,” he said, “want Bible reading and prayer in the schools.”37 Graham was not alone. Many others saw a rising threat to Christian values through the public school system. By the end of the 1960s, education was compulsory in every state and public policy gave government—mostly local but also increasingly state and federal—the authority and increasing resources to provide that education in secular, neighborhood-based schools open to all.

*** As the direction of education policy and law moved steadily toward more access for more students, almost always through secular public schools, opposition began to mount. While private schools had long operated in certain parts of the country, most education policy was premised on the assumption that students would attend neighborhood public schools. And though there had been countless efforts by local officials to oppose this trend, especially when it came to integrating schools by race, in most cases that opposition was overcome by successful federal efforts or court rulings. By the 1970s, the Court maintained its direction on education and religion, but conservative activists began to mobilize sympathetic voters by

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showcasing how court rulings demonstrated the encroaching power of federal officials to stifle Christian values. In 1971, the U.S. district court in Washington, DC, passed a ruling in Green v. Connally (originally Kennedy), a class-action suit brought by a group in Mississippi against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) concerning racially segregated private schools. So-called “segregation academies” or “seg-academies” had been founded shortly after the passage of school desegregation in the 1960s.38 Often connected with churches, including Jerry Falwell’s in Virginia, seg-academies were a way for white families to circumvent public schools and resist federal desegregation efforts. The plaintiffs in the case sought to prevent the IRS from granting tax-exempt nonprofit status to those private schools that had prevented the enrollment of black children. Though these schools were privately operated and received no direct government support, tax-exempt status is typically granted only to charities so they may accept tax-free donations, and thus the status is treated as a tax benefit. As the case wound through the courts, President Nixon directed the IRS to develop a policy to deny tax-exempt requests from segregated private schools. Consistent with Nixon’s new federal policy, the court ruled in 1971 in favor of the Mississippi plaintiffs, preventing the IRS from granting taxexempt status unless “the applicant school is not a part of a system of private schools operated on a racially segregated basis as an alternative to white students seeking to avoid desegregated public schools.”39 Some scholars have pointed to this case and Nixon’s policy as the catalyst for the explosion of conservative activism and political mobilization by the end of the 1970s.40 After the court’s ruling, the IRS denied the application for tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University, the racially segregated South Carolina college, incensing staunch conservatives and energizing evangelical activists. In 1982, the Reagan administration overturned the Nixon rule. Though the New Right had been using abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment to energize conservative Christians, as the New Right political activist Paul Weyrich said one year later, “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. . . . What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against Christian schools trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”41

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Though it was Nixon, not Carter, who was president at the time of the initial controversy, many scholars agree that the conservative movement effectively used the controversy with the IRS to mobilize primarily white churchgoers as the victims of increasingly powerful liberal bureaucrats.42 At the intersection of race, religion, and education, conservatives found a powerful locus around which to organize, mobilize, and reorient sympathetic citizens—mostly whites—to their cause. While the IRS/seg-academy issue and the textbook wars helped political entrepreneurs like Weyrich frame the threat to conservatives, it took others to connect the threat to a policy agenda. If seg-academies were an impractical solution, what could conservatives, especially evangelical conservatives, do? They needed public policies to translate the rising anger and political energy in the conservative community into control of the public square. Given the direction of federal education policy, they needed new alternatives to reorient communities away from what they saw as a harmful federal effort to undermine Christianity, families, and the power of white communities. What alternatives could they propose to the conventional public school system? Several ideas emerged in the 1970s and 1980s to reform not just classroom instruction but the very organization and politics of schooling. These ideas developed in different intellectual circles, often linked to the introduction of more choice in education: homeschooling, private school vouchers, and charter schooling. Another strand of conservative education policy, not addressed in this book, was the push for centralization and stronger state control of local schools.43 Leaving those efforts to thwart changing local politics and the rise of African American representation on school boards, conservative policy advocates focused intently on choice, freedom, and the power of markets to reform schools. At least since the 1970s, conservatives have linked their interests in markets, freedom, and choice to education, many drawing on the work of Milton Friedman in the 1950s, such as his “The Role of Government in Education.”44 The disparate ways that school choice has been framed have sometimes led to strange political bedfellows and in other cases to great partisan polarization.

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T H E S TA R T O F H O M E S C H O O L I N G At the start of the 1970s, as the conservative movement was organizing, education policy and judicial trends began to shift, opening a window of opportunity for the idea of homeschooling. In 1972, a lawsuit, Yoder v. Wisconsin, made its way to the Supreme Court. A group of Amish and Mennonite parents had been convicted of violating Wisconsin’s compulsory schooling law, which required students to attend school until age sixteen. The parents had refused to send their children to school past the eighth grade, arguing that this law violated their religious conscience. The Court had to balance the competing interests of the state to provide universal education against the rights of parents to freely exercise their religion. The Court ruled in favor of the parents and upheld the lower court’s ruling. “Secondary schooling,” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, “by exposing Amish children to worldly influences in terms of attitudes, goals, and values contrary to beliefs . . . contravenes the basic religious tenets and practice of the Amish faith, both as to the parent and the child.”45 The Court found the state’s case—that the interests of universal school attendance up to age sixteen outweighed these religious rights—unconvincing. The Court concluded, “The First and Fourteenth Amendments prevent the State from compelling respondents to cause their children to attend formal high school to age sixteen.”46 The Yoder decision did not specifically address homeschooling, but it upheld parental rights and reversed a trend in jurisprudence that had opposed religious arguments. The ruling coincided with growing interest in the idea of educating outside of formal schools, public or private. It also coincided with the textbook wars in Kanawha County. Both indicated a new direction in education opposed to the common, secular public school.

*** Though protesters in Kanawha may not have been calling for homeschooling by name, elsewhere in the country the idea of homeschooling was emerging as a policy response to several related themes: federal control,

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secularism, and parent rights. We can track the idea of homeschooling and the later adoption of homeschooling policies to a few key characters.47 The first is John Holt. Holt was an educator from Massachusetts who published a newsletter from 1977 to 2001 called Growing Without Schooling (GWS). While Holt was not deeply embedded in a larger political movement, his pedagogical vision and savvy network building brought many families to the idea of educating at home. Holt developed an anti-institutional vision for educating at home that contrasted with the rigid approach of most public schools, including the ones with which he had firsthand experience as a teacher. He had first described this critique in a 1964 book titled How Children Fail, and later in How Children Learn. By the mid-1970s, Holt had moved from school reformer to educational radical with his book Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better, which argued for a movement to allow parents to remove children from schools. Holt wrote: “Do not waste your energy trying to reform these [public] schools. They cannot be reformed . . . what we can do and should do right now is attack the legitimacy of compulsory education and schooling.”48 Holt believed that children taught out of school would learn faster and at a lower cost to government. At the time, while the idea may have had an audience, families worried deeply about the legality of actually educating at home, and they shared these concerns with Holt. GWS was a way to answer parents’ questions and build a social protest movement. The newsletter began with a circulation of around five hundred, but it quickly captured an audience of interested families. Soon its subscribers numbered in the thousands. In the newsletter, Holt provided pedagogical justifications for his idea, emphasizing, for instance, that the length of the traditional school day was not best for children’s learning, and addressed the legal concerns readers shared with him, advising parents with legal concerns to contact lawyers in writing rather than by phone. The newsletter, and Holt’s vision itself, were not religious, but focused instead on practical advice for the day-to-day needs of those who chose to educate at home. Holt laid out what would become the typical formula for an effective homeschool, broadly speaking, and a specific type of homeschooling that

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he called unschooling. In the first issue of the newsletter, he explained that teaching at home for six hours a day, the typical public school day, was unnecessary, since even the best schools only genuinely taught—what Holt described as “concerned and adult talk” about something interesting— for fifteen minutes a day. Instead, Holt advocated for providing students at home with access to the parents’ life, answers to their questions, and “a lot of privacy, solitude, calm times when there is nothing to do.”49 Holt’s view of effective learning was decidedly unstructured, in many ways opposite to what he and others had seen in typical schools. Holt argued that an advanced degree or teacher certification was not necessary at all. Conscientious parents simply needed to open opportunities for learning and let their children do the rest. While Holt mostly covered practical advice about educating outside of a traditional school, he frequently addressed larger concerns about legality and politics. In his newsletter, he pushed for legal strategies to defend parents who were in trouble with public authorities and laid out a lobbying strategy to advance homeschooling policy. In his early issues, Holt was bullish on the support for homeschooling in the courts. He reasoned that in a state that legalized homeschooling, even if a local school board made it difficult to educate at home, “the Supreme Court may someday rule that the board has no right to do that.” But he cautioned that “the Court will almost certainly not rule that any states who have not yet passed laws allowing for home instruction ought to and must do so.”50 For that reason, Holt argued that the homeschoolers (whom he referred to as “unschoolers”) “are going to have to think about making friends in the various state legislatures” and learn relevant laws.51 He also articulated a specific view on social change consistent with policy feedback theory, though surely unintentionally. “In starting this newsletter,” he wrote, “we are putting into practice a nickel-and-dime theory about social change, which is, that important and lasting social change always comes slowly, and only when people change their lives, not just their political beliefs or parties.”52 Holt recognized the consequence of removing children from formal schools, public or private, and also recognized that those who chose to do this were in a distinct minority. Nevertheless,

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while he believed “we are not likely to become an effective majority for many years,” he anticipated that “some time later, that 1 percent minority becomes 2 percent, then 4 percent, then 10, 20, 30, until someday it becomes the dominant majority, and the social change has taken place.”53 Educating at home was not just about individual decisions; Holt saw a future in which a type of positive policy feedback would result in change in educational practice and society. Holt was the founding father of the modern homeschool movement.54 He is emblematic of how early homeschoolers formed a network of those interested in (but worried about) educating at home. His communications created a parallel path for families seeking new ways to educate, separate from existing institutions. His writing showed that the advent of homeschooling pedagogy was part of a wider vision for social change. At the time, no affirmative homeschool laws or policies were on the books, but Holt helped initiate the movement to support the growing political action on homeschooling. GWS was a mechanism to build a network, linking likeminded families together at a time when many feared criminal sanctions for homeschooling. Holt’s attention to politics also instilled in this early homeschooling network the value of thinking about homeschooling not just as a pedagogy, but also as an arena of political conflict and social change. Though his vision for change was focused narrowly on education, Holt emphasized the political dimension of educating at home throughout much of his writing and advocacy for homeschooling.

*** As Holt circulated his newsletter to an ever-growing network of followers, Christian intellectuals were debating the changing nature of education, the family, and child development. Many saw court rulings and the expansion of federal power in schooling as direct threats to Christian values and life. One of the most prolific and central figures in articulating this threat and devising a strategic response—and our second character in the development of the idea of homeschooling—was an Orthodox Presbyterian minister, writer, and organizational entrepreneur named Rousas “R. J.” Rushdoony.

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Born to parents from Armenia, Rushdoony grew up in California and became an ordained minister and missionary in rural Nevada. Influenced by emerging ideas of Christian libertarianism, he joined the Volker Fund in the 1950s, where he joined the intellectual debate about religion and the state.55 After writing for several years about his ideas, Rushdoony grew more strident in his criticism of government involvement in education. He bemoaned what he saw as a child-centered direction the country had taken in the last decade, which led to “the spoiled-brat student rebels of the 1960s.”56 For Rushdoony, the family was the rightful center of society, and homebased education was a means to restore this center. It was not simply about a home-based pedagogy or a fight for legal acceptance, as it was for Holt—it was also a full-throated political defense of Christian life based on a strict reading of the Bible. Public schools represented the intrusion of government into the home and an affront to the Christian values that Rushdoony believed were set as the cornerstone of the country at its founding. Rushdoony was sharply critical of scholars like John Dewey, who were tied to the modern public school: “It is questionable whether liberty can long survive under a continued onslaught of Deweyism,” he wrote.57 Public schools taught secularism, collectivism, and pluralism, all of which Rushdoony believed were opposed to the biblical foundations of the Constitution and the founding of the country. Homeschooling offered a common defense against these threats, a strategy to sweep back the rising tide of secularism, one home at a time. Like John Holt, Rushdoony created new organizations to disseminate his ideas and build a movement. One of his first efforts was to create the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. The name came from the AD 451 council at which Christian leaders sought to clarify several pressing theological issues, including the nature of Christ. Rushdoony applied the council’s theological conclusions about the divine and human dimensions of Christ to the dilemma of the twentieth century. He saw Chalcedon as a rejection of the modern welfare state’s attempt to provide salvation through government programs and institutions.58 From this vantage point, Rushdoony formed the Chalcedon Foundation as a research think tank to disseminate his ideas about Christianity

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and government generally, and family-based education more specifically, grounded in what he calls postmillennialism.59 Chalcedon, and associated organizations like the Heartland Institute, focused on a Bible-based legal strategy to defend homeschoolers in the courts and to gain the legal right to homeschool in state legislatures. Each organization was a part of the larger ascendant conservative legal movement.60 As historian Michael McVicar describes it, Rushdoony “helped build the extensive network of parents, lawyers, and nonprofit parachurch organizations that wrought this [homeschooling] revolution in national education policy.”61 Though Rushdoony remains well known in Christian theological and homeschooling circles, his political significance has been somewhat forgotten over time. This is unfortunate because he was central to the rise of the conservative movement and the formation of important conservative organizations. In religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll’s book on the Christian Right, she quotes Howard Phillips, a better-known figure in the movement who founded the Conservative Caucus in the early 1970s: “The whole Christian conservative movement has its genesis in [Rushdoony].”62 Besides Chalcedon and Heartland, Rushdoony was involved in the founding of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in the early 1980s. CNP has been known for decades as the most important conservative organization nobody’s ever heard of. Founded by Tim LaHaye, Nelson Baker Hunt, T. Cullen Davis, and William Cies, CNP’s membership has included central conservative figures spanning decades, including Joseph Coors, Sr. Edwin Meese, and Kellyanne Conway.63 In his biography of Rushdoony, McVicar relates a story that captures how central Rushdoony was to the founding of the CNP. In 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, the CNP held one of its first conventions in Dallas, Texas. CNP leaders had just discovered that officials in Washington were considering legislation to give the Department of Education new authority over Christian schools, a point of continual concern because the IRS tax-exempt issue was unresolved. Furious at the bill, the group, including Howard Phillips, Jerry Falwell, Connie Marshner, and Paul Weyrich, called Edwin Meese, who was Reagan’s main policy adviser in the White House. “Meese immediately returned the call to the

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influential Phillips, but rather than berate Meese, Phillips promptly handed the receiver to Rushdoony,” who then “outlined the legal and philosophical dangers of the bill.”64 It was Rushdoony, not the other better-known conservative leaders, whom the CNP trusted to articulate their interests to the White House. Rushdoony’s legal and constitutional views on parental rights set the stage for the homeschooling movement and the terms of its defense. He was the critical expert witness in dozens of court cases defending the right to homeschool, in which he articulated a legal and intellectual argument for homeschooling.65 His policy ideas on homeschooling traveled far. He was, for instance, against publicly funded vouchers to defray the cost of homeschooling: “To channel statist or taxed income in any way into the hands of Christian or homeschools is to surrender their freedom and to exchange it for civil controls,” he wrote.66 Many homeschool organizations remained opposed to vouchers decades later, even as sympathetic legislators proposed enacting them to make homeschooling more affordable. Rushdoony also railed against the length of compulsory education: “Christian and homeschools must take the lead in reversing all this, in shortening the present K-12 schooling into K-8, or at most nine, grades, and by again making higher education into sound schooling.”67 In the following decades, homeschool advocates battled over every potential change in compulsory education laws, another part of Rushdoony’s legacy. Rushdoony advanced quickly in conservative politics and the increasingly politicized and partisan conservative Christian community. As he enunciated a Christian worldview that placed the family at the center of society and rejected secular culture and an expansive liberal state, other leaders called for a renewed political voice for conservative Christians. For several decades before the 1960s, Christian evangelicals (including fundamentalists) had remained intentionally disengaged from politics and not aligned with a single political party.68 This meant that during much of the middle of the twentieth century, as the country faced relatively little political polarization, evangelicals were not a unified political faction. They were as likely to vote Democrat as Republican. By the late 1960s, as partisan sorting accelerated and polarization crept upward, evangelical leaders called

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for churches to regain a political voice and find political allies.69 On policy issues as varied as abortion, foreign policy, and race, evangelical leaders staked out increasingly conservative positions, eventually becoming staunch defenders of the Cold War, opposed to all forms of abortion, and resistant to important aspects of the civil rights movement.70

*** This turn in policy beliefs materialized in what became known as the Religious Right, a term loosely used to refer to the conservative politicization of primarily evangelical Christians.71 The Religious Right developed in local churches across the country, but it was soon grafted onto a national movement of influential policy entrepreneurs who sought control over the Republican Party. In Washington, a group of ambitious entrepreneurs inspired by Barry Goldwater’s losing of the 1964 presidential bid first gathered together. The New Right was founded by Connie Marshner and R. J. Rushdoony, alongside religious leaders like James Dobson, political strategists like Paul Weyrich, and appointed officials in the new Reagan administration. The New Right’s strategy included empowering new organizations, like the Heritage Foundation, to articulate an ideologically oriented policy agenda and equip other groups to mobilize grassroots activism through fundraising and communications.72 Using emerging computer technology and techniques borrowed from commercial marketing, the New Right mastered direct-mail fundraising to build the financial base of the movement.73 In 1977, the Washington Post reported that Richard Viguerie had amassed an enormous database with the names and addresses of 10 million people, to which his staff in Falls Church, Virginia, could send out 250 million letters per year.74 Directmail fundraising supported allied Republican Party groups and new organizations like the Moral Majority as they energized evangelicals to donate, volunteer, and vote. Meanwhile, by harnessing existing and new communications media, the issue-framing and policy agenda of the New Right could reach remote, but sympathetic, audiences far from Washington. For example, James Dobson

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founded the Family Research Council and used radio broadcasts to spread Christian political messages across the entire nation. Perhaps most significantly for homeschoolers, Dobson invited Raymond and Dorothy Moore to appear on his Focus on the Family radio program. The Moores were leaders in the formative years of homeschooling. In several 1982 interviews aired to Dobson’s devoted audience, they laid out the connection between Christian values and home education. These media-savvy conservative networks moved homeschooling beyond the dedicated but small network of GWS. Though non-Christian homeschoolers, including those affiliated with John Holt, were prominent at this time, it was the religious and Christian side of homeschooling that became intimately associated with national politics. Once the early battles of homeschooling legality were won, much of the political energy of the homeschooling movement shifted to conservative Christian organizations and leaders.75 This shift in national politics coincided with the fusion of the religious conservative aspects of homeschooling and libertarianism. The framing of homeschooling as an issue of free choice—specifically parental freedom— jelled with the conservative movement’s framing of other issues such as gun rights and property rights. Central to the articulation of homeschooling as an issue of morality, freedom, and liberty was Gary North, the third key character in the development of homeschooling. A trained economist, Gary North worked for Congressman Ron Paul in the 1970s before entering Rushdoony’s circle and eventually even marrying his daughter. A 2011 profile in the New York Times described North as “largely unknown to the broader public” but “an influential figure on the American far right . . . and on the curriculum of Christian homeschoolers across the country.”76 North agreed with Rushdoony on homeschooling and its relationship with Christianity, but he promoted an even clearer and more immediate political agenda. North articulated some of the clearest indications of the intentionality of homeschooling policy feedback. For many years, he operated in Texas amidst a set of fellow Christian libertarian intellectuals called the Tyler Group. For the Tyler Group, the highly decentralized structure of

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fundamentalist Christian churches was a political asset—it allowed a particular view of Christianity and social reform to spread. McVicar writes: North claimed that decentralization would lead to a systemic “positive feedback loop” in which the gains made in one sphere of society would “feedback” into other spheres, generating positive, ever-increasing levels of faith, obedience, and monetary prosperity. The divine positive feedback loop of dominion means that godly men will multiply exponentially, and that their presence will make the state sphere more unruly over time.77

North saw home-based churches and home-based schools as integral to reclaiming control from the state. By decentralizing Christianity and education—which North believed were inextricably linked—into the home, families would be at the eye of a virtuous cycle of government resistance. North vehemently opposed public schools. “Any Christian who allows his children to learn the fundamentals of knowledge in a governmentfinanced, secular humanist school,” he wrote in 1980, “has betrayed his children. Period. No qualifications, no exceptions, no excuses.”78 Elsewhere he wrote, “Until the vast majority of Christians pull their children out of the public schools, there will be no possibility of creating a theocratic republic.”79 North was uncompromising in his criticism of public education specifically and the government generally. He articulated the idea of policy feedback: “What I am proposing is a social transformation that will take centuries to develop. . . . What we need to do is get experience in the little things of social life: establishing private Christian schools; beginning local social welfare programs, funded by voluntary donations; launching local political campaigns; starting Bible studies.”80 Others in his circle further articulated this view in the Biblical Educator (BE), a newsletter of the Institute for Christian Economics. In 1980, an article in BE read, “Only a grassroots Christian School movement, consistent to the Scriptures, and dedicated to the future, can bring spiritual and material prosperity back to America. We need the sword of political action. But we’ll never see the New Jerusalem without the trowel of Christian Schools.”81

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Elsewhere, North offered one of the most frequently cited—though not universally agreed upon—depictions of the underlying motivation for homeschooling. In 1982 he wrote, So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.82

For North, Christian schools included not just private schools but also home-based schools centered around a Christian curriculum. Homeschools could transform the country by preparing students to battle in the political realm. A few decades later, in 2006, Christopher Klicka, a leading national advocate of homeschooling and leader of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), echoed North: “God is raising the leaders of tomorrow from within the homeschool movement. Our children are arrows in the hands of the homeschooling warrior and now, as they are launched into the culture, these arrows are flying straight and true. They have a purpose and an aim, and they are hitting their targets.”83 Most homeschoolers probably do not know Gary North’s writings outside of his involvement in the popular Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum. The details of North’s views of homeschooling, government, and Christianity are not widely debated, and many in the homeschool community and other parts of the Christian libertarian world who do not ascribe to his apocalyptic views reject them.84 Nevertheless, though operating at the fringes of the conservative movement, North was central to developing a political strategy that built on Rushdoony’s writings and shaped the foundational ideas on which more mainstream homeschool advocacy organizations were based. North and Rushdoony provided the intellectual framework for a Christian-centered reformation of American society. Small, local Christian

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schools and homeschools, supported by aligned organizations, were integral to this framework, as they were a way to grab power from the state and instill a different set of values in children. This approach was largely consistent with other policy issues and views of the larger New Right, which was deeply concerned with the direction of the country, the increasing prominence of the federal government, and the declining position of Christian values in society. While the New Right did not win every policy battle, by the early 1990s conservatives had taken control of the Republican Party in Washington. This success was in part due to the pact made between Christians and a set of conservative Republican Party officials led by Congressman Newt Gingrich. Evangelicals would turn out to elect conservative candidates and the party would use this power to advocate for their social agenda in Washington. The political tactics of the New Right, including direct-mail fundraising and the founding of conservative media outlets, shifted the ideology of the Republican Party to the right as new centers of power emerged, especially in the South. While the conservative movement made slow progress opposing abortion and the expansion of gay rights, homeschooling policy was a shining success.85 By the 1990s, thanks to Holt, Rushdoony, North, and others, a broad ideological coalition ensured that homeschooling was legal in every state. Enrollment was growing steadily. Unlike symbolic issues of morality—like prayer in school, pornography, and the content of popular entertainment—homeschooling was a model for policy strategists in the conservative movement, especially because early on they found common cause with nonconservative groups in libertarian and progressive camps. Rather than frame issues based on morality alone, a rights-based policy agenda could position any number of conservative issues more expansively and advance the cause against encroaching statism and secularism. Even Ralph Reed, the head of the Christian Coalition in the early 1990s, saw the necessity of this shift. Writing in the Policy Review, he argued: “The profamily movement’s political rhetoric has often been policy-thin and valueladen, leaving many voters tuned out”; thus, he argued that “without specific

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policies designed to benefit families and children, appeals to family values or America’s Judeo-Christian heritage will fall on deaf ears.”86

*** By the end of the 1990s, the organizational structure of the Christian Right had imploded. The Moral Majority had closed a decade earlier, and its successor, the Christian Coalition, was nearing its own end. Movement leaders had lost hope that a political strategy would even work. The Christian Coalition, which had adopted a strategy of influencing politics through local school board elections and encouraging the expansion of private Christian schools, increasingly saw homeschooling as a feasible alternative.87 Indicative of this possibility, enrollment in conservative Christian schools remained flat after 1989 at fewer than 400,000, while homeschool enrollment tripled to a million students during the 1990s.88 As Wilcox and Robinson argue, “In 1999, as the [Clinton] impeachment effort stalled, Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative activist who helped form the Moral Majority, announced that the culture war was lost and advised conservative Christians to begin to create alternative cultural institutions and withdraw from culture.”89 Weyrich even pointed to homeschooling as a way forward for social conservatives and the Christian Right. In his famous “Letter to Conservatives,” Weyrich wrote that “what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness.”90 And he did not mean this abstractly: What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead “condition” students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes.

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Of course, by the time Weyrich wrote this letter, his influence and the wider influence of the New Right within the Republican Party had waned considerably. But the point reflects the evolution of the politics and policy agenda of the conservative movement from the 1970s to the 1990s. Homeschooling and its key advocacy organizations withstood the tumult that shook up the conservative movement through the 1980s and 1990s. Homeschooling was a policy success that flourished long after other causes had floundered. By design and intent, it created an effective parallel politics that appeared to be a form of retreat and even bipartisan compromise, yet in actuality it was a novel way to bring up the next generation of conservative activists, ready to mobilize in defense of a specific vision for the country.

THE IDEA OF CHARTER SCHOOLING As homeschooling spread across the country, another set of educational reformers, embedded in a very different political environment, developed an alternative remedy to the perceived crisis in education. As noted earlier, throughout much of the twentieth century there was an increasingly standardized approach to educating children and organizing schools. Local government operated schools attended by neighborhood children. Geography determined enrollment, and so many geographically based social problems—including racial segregation and unequal distribution of resources—materialized predictably in lower performance for students in certain neighborhood schools. Because these same families typically could not afford the tuition at the only other schooling option, a private school, public schools rarely lost disgruntled parents. According to critics, this government monopoly exacerbated the geographical inequities in the system, with bureaucracies showing little motivation to change and a powerful representative of teachers—the teachers’ union—advocating for the status quo.91 During the same period, opponents of unions focused on shifting public opinion and the courts to oppose organized labor. Founded in 1955, the

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National Right to Work Committee (NRWC) aimed to weaken unions by promoting the idea of the “right to work,” both in the media and as a legal strategy to end policies that required union members to pay dues for representation.92 In the 1970s, the NRWC used teachers who refused to pay union dues as a sympathetic face for the movement, a tactic that caught on in major national magazines like Reader’s Digest, which profiled teachers as victims who had been deprived of their liberty. Opponents of the educational status quo foresaw a policy solution that would decouple enrollment from neighborhoods and dislodge the power of teacher unions. New schools that were free to enroll students across a city and hire teachers with fewer union encumbrances could improve educational performance. By allowing parents to act as consumers, schools would be compelled to compete by improving teaching, curricula, and learning outcomes.93 As with homeschooling, there was not a single cause behind charter schools emerging as a viable policy solution. And rather than a constitutional debate in the courts, as was the case for homeschooling, it was a federal report that spurred the creation of charter schools. In 1983, Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education published its landmark report, A Nation at Risk. The report—which suggested the country’s schools had grown mediocre and students were falling far behind the achievement levels of other countries—catalyzed debates about the quality and outcomes of schools, especially schools serving minority students. Policy advocates responded to A Nation at Risk by recommending greater standardization of curriculum, higher expectations for student achievement, and more spending on underperforming schools.94 Moderate Republicans and Democrats took up a reform agenda focused on excellence and testing. President George H. W. Bush pushed for bipartisan agreement on a set of goals and ways for the nation’s governors to hold schools accountable through rigorous testing. Enter charter schools. Perhaps ironically, it was teacher–labor leader Albert Shanker who first popularized the idea of forming new, independent public schools. Shanker was the president of the American Federation of

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Teachers. In a 1988 speech, he explained, “Just as within the last few years we have developed ways in which entire schools, by a method of consensus or majority vote, can decide to do things that are very different from the rest of the system and to move out of a lock-step situation.” Shanker believed educational change could come from teachers, who would form what he called “a school of choice.” “This union now needs to seek ways that will enable any group of teachers—let’s say six or seven or eight or twelve teachers in any building—and any group of parents to opt for a different type of school.”95 Shanker envisioned these new schools operating within existing schools, but they would be independent and operate with great autonomy. Though they would still be publicly funded, he went so far as to argue that “there are all sorts of regulations that get in the way of change. . . . If the group provides a better, an alternative way of accomplishing the same [educational] purpose, then the rules and regulations should be waived.”96 As Shanker’s idea circulated in teacher union circles, a teacher from Massachusetts named Ray Budde proposed a similar idea with a slightly different focus.97 Budde foresaw school boards, not teachers, granting permission to form independent schools. His name for the new schools came from the act of a public authority issuing legal permission or a “charter” to start a school, and it soon gained popularity.98 Budde’s approach was organizational. He envisioned charter schooling as a way to reorganize school districts. He asked, “Can we in education build and maintain a school district organization within which teachers own the function of instruction and, through their efforts pupils learn what they need to know and, in the process, acquire the attitudes and skills to become lifelong learners? Education by Charter within a ten-year plan is one way this might be accomplished.”99 His vision was not to dismantle public schooling but to revamp it. Chartering would be, as it always had been according to Budde, a function of government, funded by tax dollars and structured within public institutions. It took another decade after Budde first suggested the idea of chartering before pressure for school reform built enough to catch the attention of national education leaders like Shanker. While Budde and Shanker are

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often credited for the introduction of the charter school idea, it required other policy entrepreneurs to advance the idea into the political realm. One of the most significant was the educational policy entrepreneur Ted Kolderie, who took these rough ideas and turned them into public policy for the first time in Minnesota.

*** By the late 1980s, while Republicans were moving sharply to the right, Democrats were moving to the center. Democrats on the rise, like thengovernor Bill Clinton, allied with new centrist organizations like the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), which he chaired in 1989. Unlike homeschooling, which had a strong connection to staunch conservatives, charter schooling found a home in the centrist politics of the Democratic Party. In 1990, Kolderie wrote a policy paper on school choice and charter schooling for PPI, which Clinton took up on a pre-presidential campaign speaking tour of the country, despite the limited support for the idea from teachers.100 While Shanker envisioned teachers at the center of chartering, teacher unions were not the main coalition members behind the reforms. Instead, another part of the Democratic coalition, civil rights groups, particularly relatively new civil rights groups, backed charter policies.101 Charter schooling became a centrist approach to education reform for Democrats, while homeschooling drifted toward ideologically extreme reform for Republicans. Researchers have demonstrated these divisions between parts of the school choice policy world. Education scholar Elizabeth DeBray-Pelot and her coauthors explain that “supported by a strong network of state and local organizations, the homeschooling movement has continued to grow exponentially, often at the expense of both public and private schools; and the libertarian wing of this movement is quite suspicious of charter schools and voucher plans as potential threats to coopt the movement.”102 The political coalitions backing different school choice policies have been varied and not always in agreement. As Clinton and centrist Democrats embraced the idea of charter schools at the national level (they are first mentioned in the Democratic platform

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in 1996), Kolderie was working to enact charter policy in Minnesota. In 1990, he criticized the monopoly that public school districts had over crafting policy and operating schools. Building on Budde and Shanker, he suggested: “The state transfers the attendance decision to the student. . . . This is choice.” He added, “The state makes it possible for new public schools to appear; sponsored by some public organization other than the district. This is diversification.”103 Choice and diversification would place competitive pressure on school districts: “Suddenly, for the district, a decision not to change and improve would not be without practical consequences.” For this to happen, Kolderie argued, the state had to open “the opportunity for some public organization other than the district to start a public school,” including another school district, a college, local government, the state government, or even the federal government.104 By 1991, Minnesota had adopted the first charter school law, and in 1992 the first charter school opened: City Academic in St. Paul. Over the next ten years, aided by the work of the Minnesota-based Charter Friends National Network (CFNN) to coordinate state advocacy organizations, dozens of other states adopted similar legislation so that public entities could grant charters to independent groups to open public schools. A bipartisan group of governors across the country saw charter schools as the center path forward for school choice.105 Meanwhile, moderate Republicans in Washington aggressively backed standards-and-excellence plans for educational reform, often in concert with leading business groups. For these moderate Republicans, charter schools could be bound to the same set of testing and accountability procedures as other public schools, merging choice and accountability within a single policy regime. With Reagan in power, conservatives in the Department of Education, including Secretary William Bennett and Chester Finn, pursued a standards-based national reform from Washington. Recognizing that this approach might turn off some conservatives, conservative educational leaders like Finn hedged their bets and “always coupled more centralizing measures related to standards and assessments with radically decentralizing

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ones, such as proposals advancing private school choice, thereby blunting the potential divisions in the conservative camp,” according to political scientist Jesse Rhodes.106 Nevertheless, enthusiasm for standardization of curriculum and nationally driven accountability reforms soon plummeted in conservative circles, and many Republicans began turning against this approach by the time George W. Bush was in the White House a decade later. In the mid-1990s, charter schools became a part of the Republican Party’s platform (mentioned for the first time in 1996) alongside other school choice policies, such as homeschooling (mentioned for the first time in 1992) and tuition tax credits for private schools (mentioned for the first time as early as 1972). But at first charter schools did not align closely with the increasingly ideological polarization of the party or the staunchest members of the conservative movement. This was mostly a function of the geography and demographics of these new schools, which were not especially conducive to the rural, evangelical, and white core of the GOP. Though homeschooling and charter schooling share certain qualities— including opposition to government bureaucracies and a focus on choice— there is little evidence that charter school advocates intended for the policy to generate political feedback. We can see that, for instance, in President Bill Clinton’s statement at the signing of the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998, in which he focused squarely on the educational benefits of this reform and the bipartisan aspects of the bill.107 Unlike Rushdoony and North, those leading the charge on charter schooling rarely talked about the transformative potential of charter schools outside of the schoolhouse. For Budde, Shanker, and Kolderie, charter schooling would introduce innovative approaches to classroom instruction and the organization of public schools by placing competitive pressure on enrollment. It would transform education, not politics.

*** Homeschooling originated as a coalition of libertarian-oriented school reformers like John Holt and conservative Christian intellectuals like R. J.

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Rushdoony in the late 1970s. Charter schooling emerged as a centrist policy innovation closely aligned with the market-based consensus between moderate Democrats and Republicans in the late 1980s. While both emphasized the failings of the public school system and choice, the arguments differed in significant ways and offered very different policy solutions. Because the historical politics of each varied in significant ways, and because the designs of homeschool and charter school policy differ in theoretically important ways, it is reasonable to wonder whether they generate different feedback effects. Homeschooling policy entrepreneurs intended for political outcomes which suggests that they expected different feedback effects than did charter school advocates—specifically a community of families with a pervasive conservative identity and a set of interest groups ready to mobilize these families to political action to defend homeschooling policy and other related conservative causes. But the question raised by this chapter is whether these distinct political developments can be observed in differences in policy design. Are homeschool and charter school policies designed differently? And do these differences align with the idea of conservative freedom policy? The next chapter answers these questions by showing exactly how state policy makers designed each policy and how closely these designs correspond to the political history presented here.

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3 DESIGN OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY

T

H E L AS T C H A PTE R examined the evolution of conservative politics since the 1970s in relation to two school choice policies: homeschooling and charter schooling. Homeschooling policy closely connected with the pro-freedom and antigovernment ideological thrust of the conservative movement, its intellectual leaders, and key policy entrepreneurs. Charter schooling, on the other hand, became part of the centrist politics of moderate Democrats, Republican reformers, and allied business leaders pushing market-based reforms in schooling. These different politics influenced the design of each policy, but only charter schooling was designed within existing public institutions. Homeschooling was deliberately designed outside of them, part of an intentional effort to link those who opted to educate at home with an ideological and political movement. This chapter explores what happened next: the initial passage of school choice policies starting in the 1980s. The different political histories of each policy area, policy feedback theory suggests, should align with subsequent politics, political organizing, and policy change. But to explore differences in policy feedback, we must first understand how American education policies in general and school choice policies in particular are designed.

DESIGN OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY

DESIGNING HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY To casual observers, school choice policies emerged from a similar political history and a common critique of public education. This isn’t the case. Homeschooling and charter schooling developed quite differently, each the result of distinct coalitions designing and adopting them. Policy design establishes precisely how abstract policy ideas will be enacted in practice and how they may lead to (or fail to lead to) policy feedback effects. When it comes to education, policy design determines how schools are run— everything from teacher compensation to textbooks—and each of these aspects may be designed differently, so we might expect different policy feedback effects. Public schools were designed with strong connections to public and governmental institutions, including central decision making by democratically elected school boards and superintendents, funding through property taxes, and oversight by educational bureaucracies (table 3.1 categorizes aspects of four school policies according to strong, medium, or weak connection to governmental institutions). Some school choice policies also were designed to work within these existing public institutions. In these cases, the strong relationship to existing government institutions should lead to policy feedback effects that are largely the same as for public schools. For example, certain school choice policies loosen the neighborhood boundaries for school enrollment, allowing parents to choose public schools elsewhere in their district. Magnet schools—specialty public schools operated by public school districts in which enrollment is based on a particular theme rather than on geography—operate within this policy design.1 Though parents are given new choices, this school choice policy design remains within existing public school system institutions, including the same rules for teacher employment, testing and accountability, and public funding. As suggested in chapter 1, this policy design, where most aspects are strongly connected to existing government institutions, limits some policy feedback effects and increases others. If magnet schools are required to hire

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certified teachers and adhere to collective bargaining agreements, existing teacher unions will remain active in school operations, reducing the demand for new professional organizations and interest groups to represent teachers. Likewise, if they are required to abide by standard testing and data-reporting requirements, government education officials will continue to oversee them and hold them accountable for good and bad performance as they would for other public schools. Conversely, the close relationship with government will likely promote solidarity with other public schools and government in general among parents, students, and teachers, in each case an interpretive feedback effect. Charter schools are designed to be more autonomous than magnet schools. Following the design articulated by Ted Kolderie and others, charter school policies are based on the premise that a public authority grants a charter to open a school, in many cases to a for-profit company that will operate the school according to a contract with the government. The process of authorization strongly links the new charter school to some public education rules while exempting it from other rules, especially the rules relating to teacher employment. By and large, as Shanker, Budde, and Kolderie envisioned it, this school choice policy works within existing public institutions (a position in between a strong and weak relationship, labeled as “medium” in table 3.1). Charter schools remain public: funded by public expenditures, required to administer standardized tests, and (in most states) required to hire at least some certified teachers. Charter schools must adhere to federal civil rights laws and rules on health, safety, and special education.2 Importantly, the typical charter school policy requires that the per-pupil funding associated with a student who chooses to leave the public school travels with the student to the new charter school. Those primarily interested in traditional public schools, especially teacher unions, do not like this financial arrangement, as public schools stand to lose resources if enrollment shifts to charter schools (research on the effects of charter schools on achievement in public schools generally finds negligible effects).3 But just like other conservative freedom policies, some school choice policies were designed to work outside existing institutions or with only a weak relationship to government. Publicly funded private school voucher

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TABLE 3.1 COMPARISON OF POLICY DESIGN FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS, CHARTER SCHOOLS, VOUCHERS, AND HOMESCHOOLS L E V E L O F CO NNECTION TO G OVERNMENT I NSTITUTIONS P U BLIC

CH ART ER

SCHOOL

SCH O O L

SCH O O L

VOUCHER

HOMESCHOOL

P O LICY

P O LICY

POLICY

POLICY

Funding and resources

Strong

Strong

Strong

Strong

Participation and enrollment

Strong

Medium

Medium

Medium

Pedagogy and curriculum

Strong

Strong

Weak

Weak

Personnel and teacher employment

Weak

Weak

Weak

Weak

Testing requirements and accountability

Strong

Strong

Medium

Weak

Data reporting requirements

Strong

Strong

Medium

Weak

policies, such as the policy adopted in Milwaukee, allow parents to leave the public school system and enroll their children in a privately operated school. As the name suggests, the new private school must abide by few of the rules imposed on public schools, especially relating to teacher employment and curriculum, though some states require private school students to take standardized tests, particularly when the school accepts vouchers. Public institutions, such as the local school board, have little say in the operations of the private school, which is, in part, why vouchers had a dubious early history in the 1950s and 1960s as a way for segregationists to avoid integration after Brown v. Board of Education.4 However, vouchers are typically funded by public expenditures that subsidize some portion of the tuition at private schools, including religious and nonreligious schools (the Supreme Court case of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue has cast this traditional design of school vouchers into doubt because Montana’s policy is based on tax credits, not direct financial support from government). This means that, even though parents leave the public school system, they do not leave the

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public arena entirely, and voters and policy makers remain connected to the policy through the expenditure of public funds. The most extreme version of school choice policy designed outside of existing public institutions—and the one most closely aligned with the conservative freedom policy agenda described in the previous chapter—is homeschooling. Homeschool policy promotes choice with no public expenditures and few, if any, connections to existing public institutions.5 As Kevin Williamson wrote in the National Review: “Homeschooling families simply choose not to participate in the system—or, if they do, to participate in it on their own terms.”6 In general, as John Holt recommended, homeschool teachers need not be certified by state or local government-sanctioned procedures to teach. Homeschool families receive almost no direct public funding and adhere to few public rules about textbooks, curriculum, and instruction.7 Including religious texts, prayer, and teachings, as Rushdoony and North suggested, is not unusual or prohibited in homeschools. In some places, homeschool families are required to administer state exams, but the testing has far fewer consequences than the high-stakes testing in public or even charter schools.

E X P E C TAT I O N S A B O U T F E E D B A C K E F F E C T S F O R HOMESCHOOLING AND CHARTER SCHOOLING Based on this description of school policy designs, what should we expect, if anything, about feedback effects, especially the effects relating to interestgroup communication and mobilization, counter-mobilization, individual political identity and attitudes, and ultimately policy change? Chapter 1 explained that effects are categorized as positive when they increase or strengthen political attitudes and participation and negative when they decrease or weaken them. And they are categorized as resource effects when they relate to changes in material well-being and as interpretive effects when they relate to cognitive changes in attitudes or identity. Effects

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can be felt by those opting into the policy and even for the rest of the community, including those opposed to the policy. So a positive effect for opponents might ultimately overturn the policy in favor of some earlier status quo or another policy alternative, whereas a positive effect for those opting in will solidify the policy. Initially, individuals who opt into freedom policy choices such as homeschooling will feel the loss of existing institutions and government support. This feeling will generate demand for the creation of new institutions to fill the loss and support their needs. New organizations, associations, and interest groups are likely to form to provide these services and aid, creating a new and parallel civil society with its own rules, practices, and beliefs. This result mimics the positive resource effects associated with government support of nonconservative policies. Next, those who opt into these policies may have their views of government and interest in politics transformed and aligned closely with others in the new institutions. For example, political scientists David Fleming and colleagues attribute the higher rates of political participation and volunteerism among school voucher students to the impact of Catholic and other private religious schools, which often require service learning.8 Those who opt in may also have changed views of government itself. In moving from existing to new, nongovernmental institutions, they may grow distrustful of government, especially if the groups they join espouse this view. Political scientist Kristin Goss suggests such a relationship to policies that are built around voluntary service because “the state reinforces the perception that problems adhere to the individual, not to the collective.” This would “encourage a psychological and behavioral disposition toward charitable service and to devalue collective action for welfare state expansion” (emphasis added).9 Political scientists Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider offer a similar assessment: third-party government designs that paradoxically “were supported because they brought government closer to the people may, in fact, lead to confusion and alienation” (emphasis added).10 The result will be an increasingly hostile view of government, an interpretive feedback effect. Overall, whether these policies generate good or ill feedback effects for those who opt into them depends on the policy design and mediating

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socioeconomic factors, but the mechanism of the effects is driven by participation in the new institutions formed because of the conservative policy and disengagement from existing institutions. But what about the feedback effects for those who do not opt in? Because of the hidden qualities of many of these policies, those not directly engaged in a policy may not even know the real extent of the policy in their community. They will continue to interact with their existing community members, confront the same institutional rules and practices of life, and experience nothing new. But those existing institutions may soon be changed by the absence of those who have opted out: fewer residents living in a public neighborhood, fewer members joining civil society organizations, fewer citizens directly connected to the functions of government. This may all happen unbeknownst to those affected by these incremental changes. But eventually these effects will make themselves apparent. Based on these ideas, we would expect strong and positive feedback effects for those who opt into a conservative freedom policy that is enacted outside of existing institutions (see table 3.2). The person who chooses this policy design will immediately interact with and benefit from new and varied institutions that provide needed services (strong positive resource effect). These new institutions with a stake in the conservative freedom policy, also likely tied to the larger conservative movement, will shape the individual’s identity by providing strategic information, possibly redefining the person’s identity to align with the policy and its underlying conservative ideology and partisanship (strong positive interpretive effect). This might happen through attending a workshop, through reading a membership website, or through forming new interpersonal relationships with others associated with the institution. The individual’s transformed political identity, perhaps to that of a “patriotic gun owner,” can lead to a greater sense of political efficacy, easier mobilization by those new institutions, and greater participation in partisan politics, all related to the specific conservative freedom policy they opted into, but also other policies associated with the larger conservative movement. This scenario seems likely in the case of homeschool policy, which is designed outside of existing institutions with connections to government.

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TABLE 3.2 CONSERVATIVE POLICY DESIGN AND EXPECTED POLICY FEEDBACK E XPE CTE D EF F ECTS

Charter school policy design enacted within/inside existing public institutions and/ or rules

AG G REG ATE EF F ECT

EX P EC TE D E FFE CTS FO R

FO R TH O S E WHO D O

T H OS E W H O O PT I NTO

NO T O PT I NT O P OLICY

ON CONSERVATIVE

N EW CO NS E R VATI V E

A ND TH E R E ST OF THE

F REED OM P OLICY AND

F R E E DO M PO L I CY

CO M M U NITY

OLD STATUS QUO

Weak/negative

Strong/positive

• High probability of • Limited interest-group/ • High visibility and/ changing conservative or proximity, strong civil society growth freedom policy response within existing • Weak mobilization • Moderate probability of institution by policy • Little identity return to old status quo opponents, including formation policy strong countermobilization and strong accountability by government

Strong/positive Homeschool policy design • Extensive interestenacted outside group/civil society of existing public growth institutions and/ • Strong mobilization or rules • Strong identity formation • Growing feelings of distrust of government

Weak/negative • Low visibility and/ or proximity, weak counter-mobilization, diminished political participation, and weak accountability by government

• Low probability of changing conservative freedom policy • Moderate probability of shifting policy further away from old status quo policy

Parents who choose to homeschool need help with curricular material, textbooks, and instruction in pedagogy. They need supportive peers, mentorship about classroom management, and advice on how to find extracurriculars. They also need guidance on adhering to state and local educational rules and completing the required paperwork. And, perhaps most importantly, homeschool parents need representation in the political arena and courts if they confront major problems. Policy feedback theory suggests that new organizations dedicated to supporting homeschool families will form to provide them with needed services. This is a strong positive resource effect.

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Over time, this newly mobilized and politicized constituency will pressure party officials—by voting and supporting ever-stronger interest groups—to defend and strengthen the conservative freedom policy. Those once involved with just the single conservative policy issue may be drawn to related conservative policies by interest groups connected to the larger party faction eager to advance the greater conservative cause. Thus, by deepening the ideological commitment of those who have opted in, the freedom policy will ultimately strengthen the position of the conservative faction within the political party as well as strengthen the policy itself. This is a strong positive interpretive effect. Those who have not chosen the conservative freedom policy operating outside of existing institutions are unlikely to be moved to action (no interpretive or resource feedback effect). They will still be served by the status quo government policy, and the relative invisibility of the conservative freedom policy will mute counter-mobilization against that policy in the near term.11 And the exemptions built into the policy design will starve the political process of information about policy outcomes, further limiting the chance for legislators to oppose the new policy and fulfill their democratic accountability role. As a result, partisan policy makers who opposed the conservative freedom policy in the past will not be pressured or even have the evidence to continue their opposition. They may simply move on to other issues. These are nonexistent or even negative resource effects that make it difficult for these policies to be reversed or overturned. Since homeschooling is designed outside of existing institutions and uses few public resources, we wouldn’t anticipate an organized response. This will likely bode well for advocates of homeschooling policy, who will face far less ongoing resistance than charter school advocates. As one writer in Practical Homeschooling magazine, one of the leading sources of homeschooling information, explained in 1999: One of the great arguments that homeschoolers have had in gaining public support is the fact that homeschooling decreases the tax burden on the taxpayer. That cogent argument will be lost if homeschoolers begin accepting public funds . . . homeschoolers must not be tempted by the

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charter school and must remain wary of any attempt by the public schools to bribe them into becoming part of the government system.12

Eventually, as a larger portion of highly mobilized individuals opt into the conservative freedom policy, and that policy is then strengthened, there may be growing negative resource and interpretive feedback effects for the mass public, weakening their political mobilization and voice in policy debates. Because a growing number of the most mobilized individuals in a community have been removed into new increasingly well-sorted parallel institutions, the rest of the community may suffer. This negative spillover effect may dampen political participation and lower feelings of efficacy in the community, thereby threatening existing institutions like public schools, weakening democratic participation and voter turnout, and further eroding the original status quo policy. There are quite different expectations for conservative freedom policies that are enacted inside (or within) existing institutions. Those who choose these policies will remain closely connected to existing institutions, creating little need for new civil society organizations. This would be a weak or negligibly positive resource effect. When new organizations do form, they will also be embedded in existing institutions, further limiting the extent to which they can develop new identities in those who opt in (a weak positive interpretive effect). And because the design is less oriented to the antigovernment ideology of the conservative movement, the coalition supporting the policy will likely be more bipartisan and centrist in nature, making it less attractive to polarized conservative (or even liberal) activists. Overall, the feedback effects will be weak for those individuals and groups who participate in the conservative freedom policy. For the rest of the community, because of the relatively higher visibility of a policy enacted within existing institutions, there will be a stronger reaction to the new policy. Groups associated with existing institutions, especially those that initially opposed the new freedom policy, will pursue counter-mobilization and pressure policy makers to move the policy back toward the status quo or even toward repeal (a strong positive resource effect). They will be armed with ample data and information about policy outcomes, because few exemptions

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will be built into the new policy’s design. And those who have been excluded from the policy for some reason may find ways to mobilize to oppose exclusionary rules and gain acceptance, as was the case for civil rights groups in successfully confronting discriminatory public-private housing policy in the 1950s.13 Combined with the weak positive feedback effects for those who opted in, this suggests a higher probability of a return to the old policy status quo. This is what we would expect for charter school policy, which seems likely to create weak incentives for organizational formation, since existing institutions will still provide support to parents, students, and teachers. Because charter school policies are enacted within existing institutions and establish medium connections to existing government institutions, they remain largely visible to the public. There remain ample opportunities for counter-mobilization by opponents and regular checks by those in government. Even as charter school interest groups form, opposing interests, including those representing teachers and administrators, are already in place to push back against charter school policy expansion. As with other conservative policies, many school choice policies are built on the assumption that promoting options will improve the quality and efficiency of education through the competitive pressures that are generated.14 These are the intended interpretive policy feedback effects of some school choice policies: the design intends for parents to act like customers shopping for the best education for their children. Other school choice policy designs are based on the idea of religious or parental freedom, potentially creating a new identity: parents empowered to govern the home in opposition to public interventions and aligned with religious values. It seems likely that the interest groups representing each policy design will communicate in order to shape identities accordingly: charter school organizations may frame issues in terms of consumer power, efficiency, and markets, while homeschool organizations may frame them in terms of values, freedom, and liberty. To be sure, it is difficult to disentangle the factors that lead people to choose each policy and the effects of these choices, since they may be similar. These effects, then, may be best thought of as emboldened beliefs and strengthened identity rather than a radical change in an individual’s attitudes. But in either case, interest groups should communicate differently.

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Politics also matters to the design of each policy, so the historical (and intentional) connection of homeschooling to the conservative movement will likely link homeschool advocates with other conservative policy issues and movements. Advocates for homeschooling seem likely to use similar frames as the conservative movement, especially rhetoric that opposes government, focuses on perceived threats to traditional values, and uses a rights-based framing. This effect may be observed in the more strident political attitudes of homeschoolers, especially conservative homeschoolers, as well as in the political behaviors, like vote choice and protest, that result from the intense mobilization by homeschool organizations. On the other hand, the centrist political coalition backing charter schools means we would not expect charter schooling to expand to other issues, especially during a time of growing political polarization between the parties that has hollowed out the political middle. Charter school advocates seem more likely to focus narrowly on educational issues and avoid peripheral policy debates, and it is then unlikely that charter school parents and students will be moved to shift their political attitudes or behaviors. Ultimately, these very different policy feedback effects should strengthen those policies designed outside of existing institutions while weakening those policies designed inside of existing institutions. Homeschool families who develop a strong identity, join new interest groups, and face limited resistance from opponents and limited public oversight should be a powerful force in protecting their policy from harm. Charter schoolers, conversely, supported by weak interest groups but facing strong counter-mobilization, will likely see their policy change frequently, pushed and pulled in a political battle over whether it is working or failing. Part of what makes it hard to generalize further about the policy feedback effects of school choice policies is that, unlike national policies such as the GI Bill or Social Security, school choice policy is designed and implemented almost exclusively at the state and local level. The design of these policies also varies by place and time. State laws and rules dictate exactly how closely or distantly associated a homeschool or a charter school is to existing public institutions, and these laws differ from state to state and

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time to time. This variation makes generalizing about design almost impossible, but it does open an opportunity to examine policy feedback, if not in a clear causal fashion, at least in descriptive and suggestive ways. But before that, we should consider the details and variation of homeschooling and charter schooling policy adoption and design.

ADOPTION OF HOMESCHOOLING POLICIES In most states from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1970s, educating at home rather than in a public or private school ranged from illegal to highly questionable. As John Holt’s newsletter documented (see chapter 2), homeschooling happened at the social fringes, where many parents feared for their family’s safety from government authorities. This fear led to a concerted legal strategy by the end of the 1970s to defend the right to educate at home and to build a legal record to support wider acceptance of this educational practice. R. J. Rushdoony and his Chalcedon Institute, aided by the Rutherford Institute and attorney John Whitehead, were at the center of this legal strategy, and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) was formed in part to centralize and support the common defense of homeschoolers in court battles across the country.15 Coalitions of defenders of the right to homeschool coalesced in many states, forming the civic infrastructure to pursue full legal acceptance and formal policies to cement the legitimacy of homeschooling for generations to come. The citizen activists who made up these coalitions typically had a mix of ideologies and belief systems: Christian and secular, conservative and libertarian.16 It was the collective work of local activists, legal advocacy organizations, and new national interest groups to pressure state legislators and local school district officials that propelled homeschool policy forward. In 1982, Arizona and Mississippi became the first two states to adopt a homeschool policy, and for the first time parents could decide to educate at home without the fear of legal repercussions. After winning initial victories,

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homeschooling policy quickly spread across the states.17 In 1983, Wisconsin and Montana passed homeschooling policy, and then Georgia, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Virginia. In 1985, eight more states passed similar policies. By the end of the decade, homeschooling was legal in thirty-three states (figure 3.1). Though these policies shared the essential characteristic of permitting parents to educate their children at home, their design differed in several key ways. One distinction is whether the state enacted a freestanding homeschooling statute or if homeschooling was incorporated into an interpretation of another statute, typically one related to private schooling. For example, the District of Columbia has no specific law on the books about homeschooling; rather, it is considered a form of private instruction—and regulated accordingly.18 Conversely, in Colorado, state law clearly distinguishes homeschooling as separate from public and private schooling, though some Coloradans homeschool under the mantle of a private school created specifically for their needs. In North Carolina, state law treats homeschools as nonpublic schools and allows a homeschool to opt into the same sort of regulation under which a private religious school would fall.

40

Cumulative number of states

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 F I GU RE 3. 1

Number of states adopting homeschool policy, 1982–1996

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According to the Education Commission of the States (ECS), state homeschool policies also vary in seven important ways: notification of intent to homeschool; instructor qualifications; required subjects in the curriculum; attendance requirements; assessment requirements; permission to participate in extracurricular activities and academics at local public schools; and online school participation (which has become increasingly important since the mid-2000s). In most states, the policy requires some form of public notification of the choice to homeschool, either annually or through a one-time official notice. Notification serves as the first official choice most families make in homeschool policy, while in other cases the parent is simply required to notify the district that the student will not be attending an assigned public school. Once that choice is made, the family who has opted into the homeschool policy confronts different rules. Most states do not require homeschooling parents to hold any particular teaching qualifications. Just thirteen states require some form of qualification, most as little as a high school diploma, a vastly different policy design than for nearly any other type of school. This means that the typical state policy permits virtually all parents (or guardians) to serve as homeschool teachers. Half of states require that homeschool students receive instruction in certain subjects, but there is great variation in what is required and even the total amount of instruction required per day or year. Most states do not require annual assessment of academic progress, and the ones that do sometimes give parents the option of what type of assessment to report each year, including an approved exam or a portfolio of student work. ECS concludes that “some states have little or no homeschooling regulation—like Alaska, Idaho and Michigan—while others have more robust oversight policies—Washington, New York and Pennsylvania,” suggesting that homeschooling policy falls along a continuum of some government control (high regulation for homeschoolers) to near total lack of control by government (low regulation for homeschoolers).19 We can see this pattern in more detail by comparing a high-regulation state like Pennsylvania to a low-regulation state like Arkansas. In Pennsylvania, the policy requires parents have at least a high school diploma to homeschool (private tutors with a teaching certification are also

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permitted to teach in a homeschool in some circumstances). Though this is not a teaching certification as might be required in a public school, it does limit who is and is not permitted to homeschool.20 If the parent meets this requirement, they are obligated to notify the school district each year of their intent to homeschool. Unlike in nearly every other state, in Pennsylvania a parent who has been convicted of a crime cannot homeschool for a minimum of five years after the conviction.21 The state requires a standard educational program for homeschooled students that includes 180 days of annual instruction; a standard curriculum including English, science, arithmetic, and civics; and a portfolio of student work. The law requires that the district loan homeschoolers relevant curricular material if requested. Homeschool students must also take an approved standardized test each year, but the homeschool teacher (usually the parent) is not permitted to administer the exam. At the end of the school year, the homeschooled student’s academic progress is evaluated by a licensed psychologist or certified teacher and shared with the district superintendent, who may deem the progress insufficient and deny the choice to homeschool the next school year. Finally, homeschool students must be vaccinated, though exemptions exist for religious and medical reasons. Though homeschooling has long been legal in Pennsylvania and large numbers of students are educated at home, the policy regulates several aspects of homeschooling, binding homeschool families in the state to a larger array of educational rules than in other states. Pennsylvania’s homeschool law is as restrictive as Arkansas’s is loose. In Arkansas, the compulsory education law requires children ages five to eighteen to be in school in some fashion, whether public, private, or homeschool. As with Pennsylvania, parents are required to notify the local school district each year of their intent to homeschool and to provide basic demographic information of the student.22 As long as the parent or guardian fulfills this requirement, there are few other rules or regulations on the homeschool. According to guidance from the state, “There are no educational requirements for parents/guardians who provide a home school for their child(ren).” Parents need not provide an explanation for the choice to homeschool, do not need to have any particular educational qualifications,

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and are not required to teach any particular subject matter.23 The homeschool family also receives no financial support or materials from the district, and, unlike public school students, homeschool students with disabilities are not guaranteed any public services. In 2015, Arkansas extended homeschooling freedom even more. The state repealed a testing requirement, and now homeschool students no longer take standardized exams. School districts are not permitted to monitor homeschool educational progress and cannot grant diplomas to homeschool students. The state also only requires immunization from disease for students attending public or private schools, so homeschooled students are under no requirement to receive vaccines.24 Arkansas’s homeschool policy is exemplary of a policy designed to be implemented outside of existing institutions, largely detaching homeschool families from public-sector financial, health, and educational obligations and entitlements. More states resemble Arkansas than Pennsylvania. As the ECS data show, a majority of states have no requirements for teacher qualifications, subjects taught, and assessments administered.25

ADOPTION OF CHARTER SCHOOL POLICIES States adopted charter school policies later than homeschool policies, more than a decade later in much of the country. Unlike with homeschooling, opening a charter school was never illegal, but there was no legal infrastructure to give government and quasi-governmental agencies the authority to grant charters to open independent public schools. Experiments of the Open Schools movement, like magnet schools, offered some opportunities to operate public schools with limited independence.26 But as described in the last chapter, although the idea of charter schools originated in the 1970s, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s and the release of A Nation at Risk that the window of opportunity opened for this type of conservative freedom school policy. First through this window was Minnesota in 1991, followed quickly by California in 1992, then Colorado,

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50 Cumulative number of states

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

99 yo nd

20

00

an

d

be

98

19

97

19

96

19

19

95

94

19

93

19

92

19

19

19

91

0

F I GU RE 3. 2

Number of states adopting charter school policy, 1991–2000s

Wisconsin, Michigan, Massachusetts, Georgia, and New Mexico in 1993, and several dozen more states over the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s (figure 3.2). As with homeschooling policy, charter school policy design varies from state to state. Several organizations have categorized these differences in charter school policy design, including ECS and the pro-charter Center for Education Reform (CER). ECS suggests three important differences among charter school schemes: who may authorize charter schools; how authorizers and charter schools are held accountable for student outcomes; and whether the teachers in a charter school must be certified. For example, Alaska’s policy only allows local school boards to authorize charters with approval by the state board of education. CER considers four somewhat similar categories most important: existence of independent and/or multiple authorizers; number of schools

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TABLE 3.3 YEAR THAT STATES ADOPTED SCHOOL CHOICE POLICY

AND MOST RECENT LEVEL OF REGULATION

Arkansas Colorado North Carolina Pennsylvania Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin

H O M E S CH O O L PO L I CY

CHARTER SCHOOL P OLICY

1985; low regulation 1988; high regulation 1988; low regulation 1988; high regulation 1984; high regulation 1985; high regulation 1987; low regulation 1983; low regulation

1995; high regulation 1993; low regulation 1996; low regulation 1997; low regulation 1998; high regulation 2012; high regulation NA 1993; low regulation

allowed and state caps; operational and fiscal autonomy; and equitable funding. As with homeschooling, charter school policy falls along a continuum from a high degree of autonomy and freedom for charter school operators to a high degree of control and oversight by government (table 3.3). We can observe these differences by comparing charter school policy in Virginia, a high-regulation state, to Colorado, a low-regulation state. Virginia’s charter school law, passed in 1998, vests control of authorizing charters with local school districts, which are not permitted to grant a charter for more than five years. There are no statewide authorities established to grant charters, meaning that power is held mainly by local government. Besides exercising control over granting charters, local districts control the budgets for charter schools and are notoriously stingy about allocating funds for facilities.27 Districts also control educational rule exemptions for charter schools, including rules on teacher employment, meaning there are no blanket exemptions granted statewide to all charter schools, including on collective bargaining for teacher compensation. Colorado’s state charter school policy is much more relaxed than Virginia’s.28 Charters can be granted by local school districts, as in Virginia, but also by a statewide authority created to grant charters in all but a small number of low-enrollment districts in the state. Colorado also gives newly

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chartered schools a lot of legal and financial autonomy from local districts, unlike Virginia. In practice, the Colorado charter school law exempts charter schools from collective bargaining rules and many other state regulations. The state does not cap the number of charters granted, meaning there is no limit on how many charter schools can operate in the state. In many ways, Colorado’s law gives charter school operators the freedom and autonomy to operate schools as they wish, with only limited requirements to abide by the rules imposed on traditional public schools. Unlike in Virginia, local district government does not maintain control over charter schools in Colorado. The designs of charter school policies, even the more unregulated versions, place them within existing institutions. This means that nearly any effort to advance the charter school movement is funneled through a formal public process. Unlike with homeschooling policy, there are usually several public or quasi-public institutions that oversee the day-to-day operations of charter schools, ranging from an institution to authorize new schools to another that financially reimburses schools for enrolled students to still another that coordinates the assessment of academic progress. Charter schools remain embedded in these institutions, even though they have a degree of autonomy and independence. For example, when a state adopts a policy with a cap on the total number of charter schools permitted or on the authorization of any new charter schools, expansion of charter schooling has to go through a public institution. In Michigan, a state with a highly unregulated policy, a cap was placed on authorizing new schools, despite lobbying to increase the cap. Homeschool policies, which were passed earlier than charter school policies, focus on explaining what homeschool families are required or not required to do to legally educate at home. Charter school policies, on the other hand, focus on establishing who has authority to issue charters and on defining how much autonomy charter school operators have. Both policies have been adopted at the state level and fall along a regulatory continuum of autonomy to oversight. The most deregulated charter school policy states, like Colorado, still maintain much more public control than the most regulated homeschool policy states, like Pennsylvania. And more than twentyfive years after the first state adopted a homeschool policy and a charter

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school policy, homeschooling is permitted in all states, yet several states have not yet adopted a charter school law.

*** Policy design sets the specific rules for how individuals and groups will experience abstract policy ideas. In the case of conservative freedom policies, not all policies are designed the same. A single underlying idea to promote individual freedom, oppose government, and open a market can be implemented in many ways. Homeschool and charter school policies illustrate these differences across and within each policy area. Homeschooling policies are designed outside of existing institutions, but they vary in how far outside of existing institutions homeschoolers can operate. Charter school policies are designed inside existing institutions, but they vary in how much control government authorities hold over the operators of charter schools. These differences in policy design influence policy feedback because they create the incentives that will motivate or suppress future political activism by constituents and opponents, thereby strengthening or weakening the policy in the future.

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I

N C H R I S T O P H E R K L I C K A’ S 2006 book on homeschooling, he writes that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) never loses because it does not “take ‘no’ for an answer from the government.” He adds, “God and God alone deserves the credit for this extraordinary record.”1 Klicka, a longtime leader of HSLDA, and the organization’s attorneys share some credit for appealing court decisions, finding alternatives, or even changing a policy to allow families to homeschool without fail. Legislators concede the record of success. As mentioned earlier, one told journalist Jessica Huseman, “I’ve never seen a lobby more powerful and scary.”2 The outsize power of this relatively small organization is a consequence of the design of homeschooling policy. This design creates certain needs: parents need pedagogical and curricular help, but also legal and political help. HSLDA and a handful of other institutions have long answered parents’ demands. This is the first piece of evidence of a policy feedback effect. Though interest groups operate in most major policy areas, it is the particular design of homeschooling policy that has fostered the creation of such influential organizations in the lives of homeschoolers. These organizations help homeschool families do everything from staying out of jail for truancy to choosing the best teaching material for their children, fostering loyalty in

THE PILL ARS OF HOMESCHOOLING

many families. This chapter describes the formation and activities of several of these national organizations.

*** HSLDA has been the national face of homeschooling and one of the “four pillars” of the conservative homeschool movement (the others are The Teaching Home, a homeschool magazine operated by Sue Welch; Brian Ray’s National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI); and the widely attended homeschool workshops run by Gregg Harris).3 I’ve mentioned HSLDA several times so far in the book, as it provides the strongest links to the political history of homeschooling in the 1980s, the New Right and the Christian conservative movement, and recent national electoral politics. Formed in 1983, HSLDA operates at the top of a federated system with subsidiary state, regional, and local organizations. Not every homeschool organization is a part of this federated system, but many of the most politically oriented homeschool groups have long been tied to it, especially those with a strong Christian orientation. HSLDA was formed to provide legal representation to families when homeschooling was largely illegal and had no sophisticated organizational infrastructure to advocate for policy. These families eventually mobilized with national political figures interested in advancing the cause of homeschooling and related socially conservative issues. Shortly before Reagan’s election, a political entrepreneur from California named Beverly LaHaye formed an evangelical Christian activist group called the Concerned Women for America (CWA). At first, CWA was a vehicle to represent conservative women, oppose abortion rights, and prevent the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Beverly LaHaye was also the wife of Tim LaHaye, a prominent member of the New Right who helped form the influential and secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) mentioned earlier in the book (Rushdoony was also a founder and Farris was a CNP member in the 1990s).4 Both LaHayes, but especially Tim, were vocal advocates for parental rights, education at home, and private Christian education.

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In 1980, CWA hired Michael Farris, at the time a lawyer and executive director for the Moral Majority in Washington State. Farris briefly worked for CWA in Washington, DC, notably in a case to remove Gordon Parks’s book The Learning Tree from a Spokane, Washington, curriculum because of its alleged anti-Christian themes, but he soon left to join another former CWA attorney named Christopher Klicka.5 Together Farris, Michael Smith (another attorney who served as vice president before becoming the president in 2000), and Klicka founded HSLDA to defend homeschool families, with Klicka being chosen as executive director. Though homeschooling at the time was barely legal in most of the country and enrollment was tiny, homeschooling policy and HSLDA emerged as priorities out of this elite network of conservative political activists and organizations. Since its founding, HSLDA has provided services to homeschoolers, many of which are what political scientists call “selective benefits.”6 The organization initially employed a handful of attorneys dedicated to addressing legal problems faced by homeschool families (in 2019, the organization had ten attorneys and a staff of one hundred), and it organized conventions to connect families with curriculum and instruction experts. HSLDA also employed lobbyists to advocate for legislative issues at the federal, state, and local levels of government. To tackle federal policy issues, in 1990 HSLDA created the National Center for Home Education and launched a congressional action program (CAP) that deputized volunteers (“district coordinators”) in congressional districts to mobilize local communities in the case of legislative emergencies. The CAP program used emerging electronic technologies, such as the fax machine, which was widely adopted in the 1980s, to disseminate political messages quickly, widely, and cheaply—HSLDA leaders described them as “ ‘surgical strikes’ on Congress.”7 In the lore of the homeschooling movement, it was this newly created CAP program that defined the political might of HSLDA in 1994, when it effectively thwarted congressional action on education regulations. HSLDA calls it the “Battle of HR [House Resolution] 6.” In 1994, a House Democrat from California named George Miller introduced a change to the reappropriation of the Elementary and Secondary

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Education Act (ESEA), the country’s main federal education law. The amendment would have required school districts to verify that teachers were certified in their assigned subject matter, including those working in public and private or nonprofit schools. The policy change aimed to increase the quality of teaching and reduce nationwide teaching inequities. HSLDA saw it otherwise, fearing that the new law defined school too broadly and would open homeschools to the subject certification requirement. Since most states did not require parents to even be certified to teach, let alone to be subject specialists, the organization worried that regulation would make many families ineligible for homeschooling. HSLDA immediately contacted its 38,000 members with an “action alert.” It faxed information about HR 6 to everyone in the network and activated the district coordinators. Farris went on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s television program, The 700 Club, to explain the situation and the threat to homeschool freedom. The phone calls began immediately: twenty thousand to Representative Miller’s office and thousands more to other members of Congress. Sixty volunteers showed up at the capitol for an impromptu lobby, meeting with every member of Congress who was not on the record as opposing HR 6. On February 24, following two weeks of calls from HSLDA members, Congress voted, and, according to Christopher Klicka, “the Miller amendment was buried 424 to 1.” Years later, Klicka claimed that this legislative victory for HSLDA became “a permanent fixture in the annals of congressional history,” and “Remember HR 6” became a phrase “repeatedly heard in the corridors of the federal government.”8 Not only did the amendment fail, but additional language was added to the law further exempting homeschooling from future federal legislation, a short- and long-term victory for HSLDA and its CAP program.9 In the words of the new bill, Nothing in this Act shall be construed to permit, allow, encourage, or authorize any Federal control over any aspect of any private, religious, or home school, whether or not a home school is treated as a private school or home school under State Law.

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Regardless of how state policy defined homeschooling, federal lawmakers were to stay far away. And to sweeten the victory, HSLDA was credited for the change on the floor of the House: “We added this language, which was offered by Mr. ARMEY on the House floor at the request of the national group representing home schools” (emphasis added).10 HR 6 became a defining part of the myth of homeschooling, a story HSLDA retold again and again as an example of effective grassroots organizing and the persistent defense of the rights of homeschoolers that has guaranteed homeschooling freedom and liberty. In this myth, HSLDA is at the center of a people’s movement that toppled Washington elites and unions through the work of energized parents, not teams of lobbyists. Though this is a big part of the grassroots story of HSLDA, the movement has also relied on substantial financial resources. HSLDA created an affiliated political action committee (PAC) to contribute money to political candidates and a philanthropic foundation to financially support homeschoolers in need. HSLDA had the resources to help develop a new college, Patrick Henry College in Virginia, and to launch a Christian youth organization called Generation Joshua in the 2000s, which gave homeschool students an opportunity to volunteer for political campaigns. HSLDA also helped fund NHERI. To speak about HSDLA is really to speak about a handful of influential organizations with related but different organizational missions, all of which leverage the time and energy of parents and centralized legal and financial resources. For years, Michael Farris built the organization’s reputation as a political force, willing to take on issues big and small to defend homeschoolers and the larger ideas Farris believed were behind homeschooling, such as Christian values, parents’ rights, and defense of citizens against threats from the state.11 As in the case of HR 6, HSLDA long battled new testing and reporting requirements and lobbied for minor changes in legislation to insulate homeschool families from changes in education policy. But HSLDA also pursued a mission much broader than wrangling over legislative minutiae. In his book, The Joshua Generation, Farris wrote, “We should not be content that we have gained recognition of our constitutional right to teach our own children. While these battles are important and will

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always continue to some degree, homeschool freedom is not the end goal. It is a means to a far greater end.” To Farris—and in many ways this is the historic mission of HSLDA—“the homeschooling movement will succeed when our children, the Joshua Generation, engage wholeheartedly in the battle to take back the land.”12 Elsewhere he wrote, “Home-school teens could become one of the most powerful forces in American politics, rivaling the labor unions in effectiveness. . . . The best way to train the leaders of tomorrow is to have our young people help to elect the leaders of today.”13 As with early homeschool leaders, Farris’s vision for homeschooling politics fits within a model of positive policy feedback where the outcomes of policy are far-reaching and transformational, not simply educational or even legislative.

*** Farris was not alone in his vision for homeschooling. While HSLDA was busy crafting legislative and legal strategies, Sue Welch and Mary Pride advised about the everyday needs of homeschooling in the magazines The Teaching Home and Practical Homeschooling. For decades, over a hundred thousand homeschool families received Practical Homeschooling as a Christian-oriented follow-up to John Holt’s newsletter (see chapter 2). Most articles peddled advice about teaching and learning strategies, emphasizing how homeschool parents could fulfill the difficult task of educating on their own. Interspersed in the magazine were regular calls for political action, sometimes implicit, but often explicit and layered with Christian overtones. In a 1997 issue, the magazine published an opinion by controversial Washington Times columnist Samuel Francis, in which he wrote, One of the characteristics of this decade is that all over the country, average citizens are beginning to rebel, quietly and legally, against the giant organizations that have come to dominate our national life. The homeschooling movement is one of the main features of this rebellion, but there are several others. Grassroots activism for immigration control, against affirmative action, in support of traditional regional and cultural symbols like the Confederate Flag . . . have all blossomed in the last few years.14

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Francis placed homeschoolers in common cause with the rest of the conservative policy agenda and the culture wars of race and ethnicity. He wrote presciently about the divisive debates to come relating to border politics, race, and the meaning of Civil War monuments, and he positioned homeschoolers at the center of those debates, even though many homeschoolers likely had little affinity for this contentious agenda. Not every story about political engagement in the magazine was so ideologically oriented. For example, in 1999 Clay and Sally Clarkson wrote about the threat of secular homeschooling and institutionalization. They recommended to parents: Support the cause. Get involved in protecting your homeschool heritage by becoming politically active. Write and visit your state and federal legislators to educate them on Christian home education. Put a Christian face on what for them might be an anonymous public policy issue. Get to know their aides and office staff.15

The Clarksons were substantially less ideological than Francis, but they continued the thread of homeschoolers’ involvement in politics and policy making. In 2003, Kristin Hamerski followed with some practical advice: “As homeschoolers it is sometimes hard to find a way to get involved with government. . . . I suggest starting your own Homeschool Student Government Club.”16 In 2004, Michael Reitz continued: “You don’t have to be of voting age to be involved in important political elections. Not only is volunteer work important for a candidate’s sake, it is one of the most exciting efforts in which a young person can be involved. Be sure to take advantage of this excellent educational opportunity this fall!”17 And in 2007, Sam Blumenfield suggested: “If you want to get involved in a political campaign, make sure your candidate strongly favors home education. It might be a good idea to simply write a letter to each candidate and ask for their stand on homeschooling. You may even find a candidate who is actually a homeschooling mom or dad.”18 Readers of the magazine regularly heard calls to write and visit legislators, form political clubs, volunteer on campaigns, and even run for office,

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often framed around a nonpartisan but ideological vision for conservative homeschooling. Alongside The Teaching Home, no liberal or nonconservative source of homeschooling information had such a large audience during these years. These messages represent perhaps the largest influence shaping the politics of homeschooling and the political activities of homeschool families. What made Practical Homeschooling magazine and HSLDA possible and powerful was the financial support of homeschool parents. Nearly eighty thousand homeschool families joined HSLDA as $100-dues-paying members, and the state and local organizations that represented them received needed support and listened to what it said. One HSLDA official described the division of labor between HSLDA and state and local organizations: the state and local organizations were “very important,” he said, especially for sharing information and nonpolitical issues, and the “major thing [HSDLA does] is on the legislative and judicial side of things, actually engaging in those activities of lobbying and tracking legislation.”19 He added, “Most state or local [organizations] completely defer to us when it comes to legal conflicts.” HSLDA members fund these activities through annual dues. Writing in 2004 in Practical Homeschooling, HSLDA’s Christopher Klicka explained to readers that to fight off new regulations, homeschoolers needed “to fund our ability to lobby the fifty state legislatures and to launch court cases to protect the rights of homeschoolers everywhere. Without members, we do not have the finances to fight back against the attack.”20 State and local organizations agree with this assessment of HSLDA. Bart Nielsen, a leader of a Wisconsin-based homeschool organization whom I interviewed for this book, concurred with the HSLDA official: “The most knowledgeable person in Wisconsin is the lawyer that HSLDA has assigned to Wisconsin and a handful of other states.” He continued: “That’s one of the real strengths of HSLDA; they have the longitudinal [view], the one organization that has the length of time in them, that has paid attention and knows what is going on.”21 A homeschool leader from a rural county in Arkansas called HSLDA a type of insurance: “I learned about HSLDA right at the beginning, always

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been a member; I look at it like insurance, buy it and hope you don’t need it.”22 I also spoke with one homeschool parent who was a member of several homeschool organizations in the Northeast. She saw HSLDA as the only source of support for legal problems. Facing a conflict with local school officials over a special needs student, she said HSLDA was the “only option for this stuff ” and that other children’s advocacy groups “don’t have time.”23 HSLDA’s specialty is rapid response. One homeschool organizational board member from the South told me that besides having a staff with expertise, they also respond very quickly. I use[d] to boast that I could get the language I needed for a bill in six minutes. They can write law like you or I would try to compose a letter. Just that fast. They can see problems in a piece of legislation as soon as they begin reading it.24

HSLDA has huge resources, a vast network, and years of experience in the timely representation of homeschool families, especially those aligned with its conservative ideology. When it lobbies on behalf of these families, HSLDA does so based on the legitimacy granted to it by members across the country. And when it calls on members to show up and protest, they do—en masse. State and local organizations have their own extensions of the political engagement strategy promoted by the national organizations. In North Carolina there is the North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE), which uses its member newsletter, originally the Greenhouse Report and later changed to Greenhouse magazine, to mobilize homeschoolers. In 2004, the president, Hal Young, explained that, though the organization was not allowed to take a side during elections, it could introduce candidates for office to homeschoolers. This was a good idea because, according to Young, “it demonstrates [once again!] that homeschoolers are far from the reclusive fringe imagined by some. Instead, we’re more active in the larger community than our peers, and it extends beyond the election season—a good group to rally behind your campaign.” This approach helped in informing candidates about homeschooling, but it also mattered because “our very freedom to teach and learn at home depends on that active participation.

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For homeschoolers, political involvement is more than a patriotic duty— it’s a survival skill.”25 NCHE also encouraged homeschool families to participate in the state’s legislative page program (an internship program at the state capitol for young people interested in legislative politics), another way to promote civic learning among homeschoolers and raise the profile of homeschooling with state officials. State and local homeschool organizations vary greatly in how directly involved they are in political action. One homeschool leader from the South said: “We have presented on the current state of homeschooling to our local Rotary Club and advocated for homeschooling to community churches. After the targeted recruitment efforts of the public school system, we have reached out to HSLDA and our state representative to discuss concerns and offer ideas to counter the infringement of homeschool freedoms.” Others remain largely inactive, often because they were not invited or extended an offer to participate. One homeschool leader told me, “As of this time, we have not been asked to advocate for families in politics.” Another said: “We have not had the opportunity to advocate on a county or state level, but given the chance, I would be honored to do so.”26 Interestingly, these two quotes came from leaders of secular homeschool organizations, typically not the target of mobilization for HSLDA.

H O M E S C H O O L I N G O R G A N I Z AT I O N S A N D R E L I G I O N Part of what makes HSLDA so influential is a major fissure in the organizational ecology of homeschooling. HSLDA has long been associated with the conservative politics of the Christian Right and the intellectual inspiration of scholars like R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Raymond and Dorothy Moore. HSLDA leaders were at the forefront of the conservative movement from its earliest days in the 1970s, and they promoted its views about government and political connections for decades. Consequently, some state and local homeschool leaders view HSLDA as unduly hostile to public schools. One homeschool leader from a southern state whom I interviewed

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called HSLDA “pugnacious toward government.” Another distinguished her organization from HSLDA by explaining, rather forcefully, “We are not anti–public school.” HSDLA does not have a religious test for membership, but it also does not shy away from framing policy issues in terms of religious freedom and Christian values. For example, it criticizes the Common Core curriculum on philosophical grounds as being rooted in harmful moral relativism and hostile to teaching an absolute truth that can only “be known in God.”27 On the treatment of children, it cautions that refusing medical treatment on religious grounds is not child abuse.28 Moreover, the organization’s staff are Christians, and it publicly identifies itself as a “Christian organization.” This approach aligns with the many homeschool families who share these religious values, though there are Christian homeschoolers who do not agree with HSLDA’s efforts to link religion and homeschooling. There are also many non-Christian homeschoolers who struggle with the often-explicit overtures HSLDA makes to Christianity. Purposefully secular homeschool organizations formed in the 2000s at the national level as a response to these conflicts. The National Alliance of Secular Homeschoolers is a small but national group without connections to religion. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is another secular national group formed in response to the outsized influence of HSLDA. Even local homeschooling organizations struggle with these issues of religion. A homeschool leader in a southern state described her organization’s founding as a specific response to religious issues.29 The organization had spun off from an existing organization in the state that had a very close relationship to HSLDA and an expansive view of homeschooling and religious issues. The new organization, the interviewee explained, was solely focused on homeschooling. Other interviewees told similar stories. A leader from the Midwest explained that the local organization board on which he served was divided over how explicitly focused on religion and Christianity it ought to be.30 The organization held a board vote and decided to pursue the less religious path, and a new splinter organization formed. That new organization adopted a religious statement that member families had to affirm at the beginning of each year.

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The issue of statements of faith comes up frequently for homeschool organizations. In an interview with another homeschool leader in the South, I learned of an organization that debated whether to require a statement of Christian faith for serving on the organization’s board. The debate was contentious and divided the board about the vision for the organization’s future. At that point in the mid-2000s, the organization had several non-Christian member families, and in the end the organization voted not to adopt the explicit statement-of-faith policy.31 In other cases, the decision to adopt a statement of a faith fractures the organization and alienates leaders, who leave to found a new organization. According to a homeschool leader in the South, following such a decision, “While we felt our faith was an important tenet of our homeschool decision and our family, we did not want to be required to agree to a statement of faith before being part of an education and social group in the community. We were asked to join about fifteen other families who we learned felt the same way and we developed [the new organization].”32 Research shows that homeschoolers roughly divide into religious and secular camps. The religious homeschoolers are often Christian or what Milton Gaither calls “closed-communion” and Mitchell Stevens calls “believers,” and the secular homeschoolers are what Gaither calls “opencommunion” and Stevens calls “inclusive.” These differences affect how organizations make decisions and accept members, but also their ability to mobilize for politics. A homeschool organizational leader from a western state highlighted this difference. She said that within the state’s homeschooling community there was a “branch of conservative Christians . . . a set of folks who are naturally going that (political) direction.” They were “particularly easy to rally” because they were energized by the connections between their faith and their educational choices. But others are drawn to homeschooling for other reasons. “New groups, secular homeschoolers who are neither hippies nor conservatives  .  .  . bring a neutral feeling into homeschooling,” including a focus on “gifted children, special needs,” while “other groups are minority families trying to get out of the school to prison pipeline.”33 These homeschoolers may not be as easy to mobilize. Many of these families

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are squarely focused on educational issues and are not drawn to the wider political issues of parental and religious freedom and liberty. Organizations reflect these different member characteristics, and their advocacy (or lack of advocacy) varies accordingly. And so the most politically active, best funded, and most engaged homeschool organizations are often associated with the conservative and Christian conservative community, and the more secular homeschool organizations are typically less politically vocal and influential in state and national politics.34 This issue does not always divide an organization. In one southern state, according to interviews with organizational leaders, the two main organizations, one Christian and one secular, work together on many issues.35 Religion does not create significant conflict or prevent them from collaborating. Nevertheless, the Christian wing of the homeschool movement is much more politically active and mobilized. This fact is evident in the religious affiliations of homeschool organizations. A third (30 percent) of the more than six hundred organizations (described in more detail in chapter 5 have some clear indication that they are religiously oriented, typically Christian. These are organizations like the Christian Heritage Home Educators of Washington in Spokane and the Association of Roman Catholic Homeschoolers (ARCH) in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is reasonable to assume that many more groups may have an implicit religious identity but do not require statements of faith or pursue as explicitly religious a mission as the others. And far, far fewer organizations are explicitly secular, like the Fayetteville Secular Homeschoolers in Arkansas or the Onslow Secular Homeschoolers in Onslow, North Carolina. These organizations are formed to serve a different homeschool need, as one homeschool leader from the South explained: “Many homeschool groups are religious and more secular groups are needed. They also want the fun and unique classes.”36 She formed a group to help secular homeschool families teach vocational and science subjects. Overall, the population of homeschool organizations tilts to the religious side, a reflection of the demographics of homeschoolers and the influence of prominent religiously oriented organizations, such as HSLDA. The sheer number of homeschool organizations and the ways they explicitly bind families together in common cause suggest that we might

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see policy feedback effects as far back as the early 1980s. This has been, in part, the natural result of demands for services from those operating outside of existing institutions, but not all of the organizational activity has been unplanned. The purposeful formation of HSLDA and the support of HSLDA by members of the New Right suggest that there was a strategic awareness of the importance of building new (or parallel) institutions to support homeschool policies and homeschoolers. Intellectual leaders involved in the earliest planning days of homeschool policy had far-reaching ambitions for political change tied to homeschooling. These ambitions could only be realized with sufficient institutional supports—legal, pedagogical, and advocacy services—to make possible the difficult job of homeschooling.

*** Homeschool policy allows parents to opt out of public schooling in favor of an alternative educational path and a host of new parallel institutions. HSLDA, Practical Homeschooling magazine, and several other key homeschooling organizations support the needs of those who opt out, supplying everything from practical advice on textbooks to political recommendations on how to lobby legislators. These organizations illustrate one effect of the design of homeschooling policy: they became powerful as they filled the needs created by opting out. Legislators fear HSLDA, not because the policy design has made families financially wealthy or led to tens of millions of members, but because its power is rooted in what it provides member parents. The result is a loyalty and dedication that make them willing conscripts in the battle for homeschool rights.

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5 HOMESCHOOLING ORGANIZATIONAL FEEDBACK AND COMMUNICATIONS

T

H E P R EVI OU S CH A PTE R showed how the design of homeschool policy creates demands from families for information and support. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and the other early pillars of the homeschooling movement formed to provide this aid by offering legal and advocacy services, as well as information on how to educate at home. These are the types of policy feedback predicted by the theory of this book. Central to the work of these national groups are the messages, sometimes explicit, that they send to families about standing up for themselves as homeschoolers, as well as more generally about the importance of politics and political participation (see technical appendix for information about the communication data collected from these groups). It seems clear that, though national groups are often the most influential in directing national policy through lobbying, much of their power comes from their ability to frame the public image of the policy. Using extensive data on interest-group communications and a number of original interviews with group leaders, this chapter considers the communications strategies of national homeschool and charter school interest groups. If there are no observable differences in how these two groups frame policy, then the variation in policy design explained in chapter 3 may

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not matter that much to feedback effects. If, on the other hand, the differences in policy design align with differences in policy framing, then we have a piece of evidence that these two school choice policies are associated with distinct interest-group politics. And these interest-group differences at the national level may later trickle down to state and local organizing and mobilization.

O U T S I D E L O B B Y I N G S T R AT E G Y Policy feedback theory suggests that, once formed, organizations influence policy beneficiaries, policy makers, and ultimately the direction of policy. To do this, organizations use specific lobbying tactics. Scholars divide lobbying tactics into two categories: inside lobbying and outside lobbying. Inside lobbying is the direct lobbying of decision makers through meetings about policy. Outside lobbying is the indirect lobbying of the public (including an organization’s own members) and the media through citizen action campaigns and communications to pressure decision makers. Inside lobbying is expensive, time-consuming, and dominated by wellresourced organizations that can hire professional lobbyists and support party candidates with financial donations.1 Overall, advocates for homeschooling and charter schooling expend relatively little on lobbying and campaign contributions compared to other interest groups in the sectors of energy, technology, and health care.2 The HSLDA political action committee, for example, gave less than $100,000 to candidates in each election from 2004 to 2018, and less than $50,000 in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.3 Outside lobbying, while not cost-free, is cheaper and encompasses a wider range of activities. Outside lobbying is also directly relevant to interpretive policy feedback. Interpretive effects involve developing identity, meaning, and self-efficacy. After the adoption of a new policy, an interest group can shape public opinion and the identity of policy beneficiaries by communicating information about the ongoing policy problem and what

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it means to participate in the policy. Because an identity connected to the policy has been created, beneficiaries may develop stronger feelings of camaraderie—what might be called a linked fate—and feel more optimistic about collective action to defend the policy. Because conservative freedom policies create separate and parallel politics, newly formed social identities may have strong ideological and partisan dimensions, shifting policy beneficiaries even further away from existing institutions and the local community. This is why it is important to pay close attention to how interest groups communicate—with the public, with the media, and with their own members. If interpretive policy feedback effects occur, we can hear those effects in the communication of interest groups.

*** In the case of conservative freedom policies, there are particular ways we might expect interest groups to shape the common understanding of a policy and the identity of policy beneficiaries. First, conservative homeschooling interest groups are likely to frame issues around social values like freedom and rights rather than social equity or fairness. Second, they are likely to characterize the interests of policy beneficiaries as being threatened or attacked by government bureaucrats.4 Third, because of the relationship to the conservative movement and the Republican Party coalition, it also seems likely that they will connect to other conservative policy priorities outside this narrow policy domain, a type of issue expansion. Most importantly, all these tendencies should be more pronounced for interest groups connected to policies designed and implemented outside of existing institutions (homeschool groups) than for those inside existing institutions (charter school groups). To explore these relationships, I identified key interest groups connected to homeschooling and charter schooling. I chose four national organizations that were central to lobbying for each policy area over an extended time period: Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA, 1996–2017), Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE, 2013–2018), National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA, 2006–2017), and

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National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS, 1996–2014). Though these national groups do not speak for state and local groups, their messages are likely to influence affiliated groups operating with fewer resources at the local level. For example, most homeschool leaders with whom I spoke commended the HSLDA’s communication tactics. One leader in Wisconsin told me, “We get the communiques from HSLDA, and if they see something going on in Wisconsin, they say it.”5 The communications of these four groups are likely to be disseminated widely and thus represent a useful though nonrandom sample of the communications of groups more generally.

F R A M I N G W I T H S O C I A L VA L U E S As the conservative movement slowly fused conservative Christian, probusiness, and libertarian wings of the Republican Party together in a common (though not always agreeable) ideological faction, the ways it framed morality and values shifted. According to political scientists Clyde Wilcox and Carin Robinson, “As part of their efforts to adopt the secular language of politics, Christian Right candidates and activists have couched their political arguments in the ‘rights’ language of liberalism.”6 The new coalition framed issues around a sense that the government posed a secular threat to their values through public policy. As political scientist Christopher Baylor argues, “Only when issues like the school prayer ban and abortion rights were framed as part of larger ‘secular humanist’ attacks on their values did theological conservatives actively oppose them.”7 Framing policy issues in terms of threats to rights has been a consistent strategy of conservatives, and some scholars say an all-too-frequent part of the racial dog-whistle politics of some conservative strategists.8 Political scientist Deborah Stone divides issue framing into four public goals: liberty, economic efficiency, security, and equity. These, she argues, are the basis on which political struggles take place, with interest groups debating what is meant by each goal and how some policy (but not others) will

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meet that goal.9 Though precise definitions are often disputed, Stone writes that equity refers to “distributions regarded as fair,” whereas efficiency is “achieving an objective for the lowest cost.” Liberty considers “when government can legitimately interfere with citizens’ choices and activities” and when it cannot, while security encompasses protection from physical, economic, or health-related harm. Stone refers to these as “motherhood issues,” ones that everyone agrees are shared goals. Nevertheless, interest groups often differ sharply on ranking these as priorities, some groups favoring the protection of individual liberty above all else and others arguing that efficiency, security, or equity should matter most. I use these same categories to code and analyze the different ways that the school choice organizations communicate and frame issues. For simplicity, the full text of each communication serves as an observation. Each observation is then given a binary code: a “1” means any communication that uses one of the relevant coding terms at least once, and “0” otherwise. Figure 5.1 summarizes some of the differences in how the homeschool and charter school interest groups have framed issues.10 The two were alike in using the equity frame: homeschool organizations used the frame 20 percent of the time compared to 15 percent for charter school organizations. But within this category was a small difference in how often each organization referred to race, ethnicity, or gender. The charter school organizations (8 percent) were more likely to reference race, ethnicity, and gender than homeschool organizations (3 percent), which makes sense given that the political coalition that has backed charter schools has typically included civil rights organizations. However, though there was a statistically significant difference,11 neither organization used the broad equity frame or often made references specifically to race, ethnicity, or gender. There are clearer differences in how often the two types of organizations used the language of rights, freedom, and liberty. A near majority (40 percent) of homeschool press releases referenced rights, and, within that, 12 percent specifically referenced parental or family rights, 14 percent referenced religious or Christian rights, and 4 percent referenced privacy rights. This contrasted with charter school press releases, which referenced rights only 13 percent of the time.

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45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

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0%

Press releases from Homeschool Organizations Press releases from Charter School Organizations

F I GU RE 5 . 1

Percentage of press releases by homeschool and charter school organizations highlighting core issues

Further, homeschool organizations primarily used a frame of freedom and liberty; charter school organizations did not. This indicates a different communications strategy. For example, nearly a third (29 percent) of homeschool organization press releases referenced freedom or liberty compared to only a sixth (14 percent) of press releases from charter organizations. When I interviewed a leader of a homeschool organization in the South, he explained this in his vision of homeschooling: “The two pillars that support home schooling freedoms are parental rights and religious liberty. If you can weaken either of these, you can weaken the right to home school. If at all possible, I will go after anything that infringes on these freedoms.”12 There are also some notable differences between the two homeschool organizations. HSLDA has long pursued a conservative Christian

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approach, while the newer CRHE has been purposefully secular. Whose rights matter is a central difference between HSLDA and CRHE. While HSLDA almost exclusively frames homeschooling as an issue of parental rights, CRHE frequently mentions parental rights and children’s rights. In a 2015 press release, CRHE founder Rachel Colman wrote, “Homeschooled children have rights, needs, and interests that do not always align perfectly with those of their parents.”13 This view does not fit with how HSLDA has framed homeschool rights. Whereas homeschool groups frame issues in terms of rights and liberty, charter school organizations are much more likely to use the language of choice and markets. In a third of press releases (34 percent) charter school organizations mentioned choice, and in a third (33 percent) they mentioned efficiency and markets. This compares to just 18 percent of homeschool press releases mentioning choice and 8 percent mentioning efficiency and markets. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers wrote about its annual meeting: “Last week, innovation was discussed often and passionately.” And another press release stated: “The charter school model was built on the premise of increased autonomy and innovation for schools in return for increased accountability for performance.”14 About charter schools developing in New Orleans, the press release read, “The vibrant charter school sector allows parents to have a choice in their child’s education” (emphasis added).15 This matches the political history and design of charter schools, which have long been based on a central argument about competition and innovation in education, not individual freedom and liberty. The fourth and final frame, security, was also more common among the homeschool organizations (14 percent) than charter schools (3 percent). Homeschool organizations mentioned threats and attacks on homeschoolers on a regular basis in their press releases. Typically, homeschool organizations viewed new regulations—including those even tangentially related to homeschooling—as threats. An example is the following: “HSLDA filed a friend of the court brief in a New Hampshire custody case which threatens to establish a rule that could be harmful to homeschoolers. ‘If left unchallenged the ruling by the trial court could mean that public schools would

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always be favored over homeschooling in custody disputes.’” Elsewhere HSLDA described a proposed bill to curtail child abuse as “a misguided attack on homeschooling in Ohio [that] may be a precursor to more general attempts to impose similar restrictions in other states.” Nevertheless, though homeschool groups mentioned security more, it was not the primary issue frame for either type of organization. To explain these patterns, we can use a quantitative model that controls for other factors. For example, it may be that over time these rhetorical patterns have changed or that changing political control in Washington influences framing decisions. I control for these factors, as well as whether a press release addresses a noneducational issue or an organizational issue (like the announcement of an event), to predict the probability that a homeschool organization uses each frame. The findings from the statistical model largely confirm the bivariate relationships (see table 5.1). Consistent with the earlier finding, the predicted

TABLE 5.1 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF POLICY FRAMING

O DD S RATI OS

Homeschool (charter school) Year Press release during Democrat in White House Press release addresses organizational issues N Pseudo R2

RIGHTS

L I BE RTY

CH O I CE E FFI CI E NCY

EQUITY

F R AM E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FRAME

2.15*** .48*** (.54) (.11) .94*** 1.07*** (.94) (9.02) 1.53* .93 (.38) (.23)

.13*** (.04) .92*** (.02) 1.05 (.31)

1.14 (.41)

1.22 (.45)

.46 (.23)

.54 (.28)

507 .10

507 .05

507 .06

4.73*** (1.19) .96* (.01) 1.59** (.37)

507 .12

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01

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SECURITY NONED UCATIONAL F RAME

ISSUE

1.42 (.37) .99 (.02) 1.03 (.27)

6.76*** (2.98) 1.02 (.02) 1.70 (.60)

3.30*** (.82) 1.02 (.01) .70 (.16)

1.02 (.420

1.61 (.79)

1.95* (.69)

507 .01

507 .08

507 .07

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TABLE 5.2 PREDICTED PROBABILITIES FOR SELECTED INDEPENDENT VARIABLES R I G H TS

L I BE RTY

CH O I CE

E FFI CI E NCY

E QUITY

SECURITY

NONED UCATIONAL

F R AM E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FRAME

F RAME

ISSUE

Homeschool

.40

.28

.18

.07

.20

.15

.33

Charter school

.12

.15

.31

.36

.15

.03

.13

probability that a homeschool organization will use the rights frame is 40 percent compared to just 12 percent for charter schools (see table 5.2). The probability a homeschool organization will use the liberty frame is 28 percent; for charter organizations, 15 percent. On the contrary, but consistent with the bivariate findings, the predicted probability of a homeschool organization using the market/ efficiency frame is 7 percent, whereas it is 36 percent for charter. And lastly, the probability of a homeschool organization using the choice frame is 18 percent versus 31 percent for charter. These multivariate, statistically significant findings reinforce the earlier bivariate findings and largely fulfill the expectations about homeschool organizations and charter school organizations framing issues in distinct ways related to the different political histories and policy designs.

O U T WA R D F R A M I N G A N D I N WA R D F R A M I N G What seems clear is that homeschooling and charter schooling organizations use different issue frames to communicate with the media and ultimately the public. While there may be other explanations for this difference, the one I offer here is the theory of conservative policy feedback. Since homeschooling policy is embedded deeply though not exclusively in the conservative movement, and the policy is designed outside of existing institutions, it stands to reason that these groups will leverage the related frames of rights and freedom.

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To test this hypothesis, I collected more documents from HSLDA. Besides press releases, the organization has communicated with its members through email newsletters since at least the 1990s. Though these emails are publicly available on the organization’s website, the audience of these messages is clearly internal or at least inward facing. If HSLDA were merely interested in shaping public opinion, then we would expect no real differences in policy framing between the public press releases and the internal emails. If, on the other hand, HSLDA sought to shape the social identities of members as much as news coverage of homeschooling, then we might expect differences in framing. Internal audiences might be receptive to certain frames to which external audiences wouldn’t be, and this would cause different patterns of communication by HSLDA across media. Using the same coding scheme, I coded several hundred HSLDA member emails going back to the early 2000s and compared them to the set of press releases analyzed earlier. The results suggest that HSLDA uses a different strategy for internal members than for the external media. First, the organization relied on freedom and liberty more often in emails (45 percent) than in press releases (37 percent) (see figure 5.2). When other factors were controlled for, the predicted probability of an HSLDA email using the liberty frame was 45 percent compared to 31 percent for press releases (See tables 5.3 and 5.4). For example, in 2002, an HSLDA staff attorney sent an email to Ohio members that read, “Long ago Edmund Burke said, ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’ For Ohio home schoolers this fall, the price of liberty means not providing a child’s middle name and place of birth.” Later that year, the organization wrote to energize members in Massachusetts: “You do not have to be a homeschooler to come out and show your support for homeschool freedoms, so please pass this message on to friends of liberty throughout Western Massachusetts.” HSLDA focused on rights much more often in press releases (51 percent) than in emails (23 percent). The predicted probability of an HSLDA press release using the rights frame was 40 percent compared to just 23 percent for an email. In 2001, HSLDA released to the press a statement that read, “Maine home schooling rights are under attack. No state in the country

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60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%

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Press releases from HSLDA Emails from HSLDA F I GU RE 5. 2

Percentage of HSLDA press releases and emails highlighting core issues

TABLE 5.3 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF HSLDA COMMUNICATIONS R I G H TS

LI BE RTY

CH O I CE

E FFI CI E NCY

EQUITY

SECURITY

NONED UCATIONAL

O DD S RATI OS

F R AM E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FR A M E

F RAME

FRAME

ISSUE

Press release (compared to email) Time

2.24*** (.32)

.55*** (.08)

2.33*** (.50)

17.76*** (8.28)

3.27*** (.62)

1.16 (.23)

3.82*** (.60)

.97* (.01) 1.26* (.16)

.98 (.01) 1.49*** (.20)

1.10*** (.02) .65** (.13)

.95 (.02) .44** (.17)

.99 (.01) 1.04 (.19)

1.04** (.02) 1.53** (.28)

1.01 (.01) .72** (.11)

.67** (.12)

9.21*** (1.72)

.68 (.20)

.22 (.23)

1.01 (.25)

.93 (.20)

.67* (.15)

Message during Democrat in White House Message addresses organizational issues N Pseudo R2

1,451 .02

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01

1,451 .11

1,451 .06

1,451 .21

1,451 .04

1,451 .02

1,451 .06

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TABLE 5.4 PREDICTED PROBABILITIES FOR HSLDA COMMUNICATIONS

Press release Member email

R I G H TS

LI BE RTY

CH O I CE

E FFI CI E NCY

E QUITY

SECURITY

NONED UCATIONAL

F R AM E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FR A M E

FRAME

F RAME

ISSUE

.40 .23

.31 .45

.15 .07

.07 .00

.20 .07

.14 .12

.33 .11

requires home school children to take their state’s assessment test, but that’s what some Maine legislators are trying to do.” In celebrating the founding of a homeschool organization, a 2003 press release read: “Fighting for a parents’ right to homeschool has been our mission for twenty years.” I heard similar language when I interviewed the leaders of homeschool organizations, especially one from a western state. She explained to me: “Homeschoolers are under attack by such things as an immunization registry, further oversight through child welfare or testing by districts, [and so on]. It seems the left has so much time on their hands and a harsh agenda against the freedom to homeschool that they mount attacks left and right while we are trying to raise our children and educate them as we see best.”16 Though she did not attribute her impressions to HSLDA information, the similarity of issue framing is apparent. Third, HSLDA also used the equity and fairness frame more often in press releases (230 percent) than in emails (7 percent), though there was no difference in the prevalence of race and gender (3 percent for both). The predicted probability of an HSLDA email using the equity frame was 7 percent compared to 20 percent for HSLDA press releases. There was no difference in use of the choice frame, though the language of efficiency and markets was more prevalent in press releases (8 percent) than in emails (1 percent). Fourth, and somewhat counter to expectations, HSLDA used the security/threat frame more in press releases (20 percent) than in emails (12 percent). This is curious. It would seem that the threat frame would mobilize members by stoking fears of government. Overall, I infer from these differences that HSLDA has different strategic goals for different types of communication. Consistent with policy feedback

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theory, it may be that the organization uses more ideologically laden language of freedom and liberty to develop a specific social identity within its membership, whereas the goal of press releases is to shape the wider public debate and opinion on homeschooling, and so HSLDA uses the less ideological frame of free choice.

I S S U E E X PA N S I O N Another way to analyze the communication of these interest groups is to look more closely at policy issues. Public policy is never just one thing. Policies often involve lengthy public decision making about spending, authority, rules, and regulations. As such, some interest groups are broadly based, like the Chamber of Commerce, which focuses on dozens of policy issues affecting business. Others are narrowly based, like a farming association that focuses on farming issues. Even narrowly based interest groups can focus on the immediate issues affecting their members or work on a more expansive array of policy issues. When an organization strategically shifts from narrow to wide, this is sometimes called issue expansion or conflict expansion. It involves the strategic linking of disparate issues and policies to show how policies are joined together.17 It often also means reframing a narrowly understood policy problem as a broader problem or showing how a problem in one policy area is connected to problems in others. This can mean demonstrating the ways that ideological agreement on one policy issue should connect with ideological agreement on other policy issues, thereby linking an ideological consensus to a policy consensus.18 When an interest group is eager to connect narrow policy issues to broader policy concerns or ideological debates as a way to build a coalition, it may engage in issue or conflict expansion. Groups do this for strategic reasons, sometimes to increase the visibility of a hidden policy, sometimes to attract new allies to defending a policy, and sometimes to demonstrate that the policy is central to a larger political project tied to a political party.

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As the Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed wrote in the early 1990s, “The most urgent challenge for pro-family conservatives is to develop a broader issues agenda.”19 Members of an interest group who increasingly see the connections between their issues and other issues may connect them into one larger cause. The press also may pay more attention to the policy problem and the interest group’s framing of the problem if they see it as integral to broad social problems. Other interest groups may instead remain focused on the narrow parameters of their policy and avoid issue expansion. For issues that are not closely linked to a larger ideology, issue expansion may be unattractive, as it may turn off nonideological supporters of the policy. Perhaps the interest group believes that expanding the policy problem to other problems will dilute support or attract unwanted attention. Sociologist Deanna Rohlinger demonstrates this pattern within anti-abortion interest-group politics and the different strategies pursued by the Christian conservative group Concerned Women for America (CWA) and the secular pro-life group National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).20 CWA wove its pro-life activism into a wideranging socially conservative agenda, including vocal opposition to gay rights, while the NRLC focused solely on opposing abortion with a moderate and single-minded approach. In the case of the conservative freedom agenda around homeschooling, we would expect advocates to leverage issue expansion, because homeschooling exists outside of public institutions. For charter schooling, which is enacted inside existing institutions, we would expect the opposite. The evidence from figures 5.3 and 5.4 supports this expectation. Looking for mentions of education issues such as curricular issues and education finance, compared to noneducation issues such as health care, marriage equality, and gun control, a majority (54 percent) of press releases from homeschool organizations referenced at least one noneducational issue. Compare that to only 46 percent of charter school press releases. This is partially explained by the salience of certain issues for homeschool organizations that are largely irrelevant for charter schools. For example, the issue of daytime curfews and driver licensing is important for homeschool families, since regulations do not mandate that homeschooled

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70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Press releases from homeschool organizations Press releases from charter school organizations F I GU RE 5 . 3

Percentage of homeschool and charter school press releases highlighting noneducational issues

35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Curric. and instruction

Facilities and buildings

School Teacher Special finance issues education and (pay/quals) vouchers

Press releases from homeschool organizations Press releases from charter school organizations F I GU RE 5 . 4

Percentage of homeschool and charter school press releases highlighting educational issues

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students remain in the home during the traditional school day. This means that changes in daytime curfews matter more to homeschool groups, and they were mentioned in 10 percent of press releases. Such changes were never mentioned in any of the analyzed charter school press releases. Conversely, some issues that matter to charter schools only occasionally matter to homeschoolers. One of those is access to school buildings, which is a constant source of contention between traditional public schools and charter schools. Compared to homeschool organizations, charter school organizations were more likely to reference facilities/buildings issues (19 percent compared to 3 percent) and school finance issues like funding, tax credits, and vouchers (29 percent compared to 5 percent). There was no difference in mentions of teacher issues, including qualifications, certification, and pay (figure 5.4). As with the differences between HSLDA press releases and emails in policy framing, there are notable differences within HSLDA communications. Though the evidence is less dramatic (and not statistically significant), there is anecdotal evidence that HSLDA addresses some issues through emails that it does not address in press releases. The organization did not mention opposition to abortion once in press releases but did address it in eight emails. In 2006, HSLDA shared information from the state-based Private & Home Educators of California on a state health-care bill that would fund “highly objectionable services such as abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.” In 2007, HSLDA recommended supporting a religious freedom bill in Utah because “a church-sponsored hospital was denied accreditation for refusing to teach abortion techniques,” among other reasons. Perhaps most clearly, in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, HSLDA sent an email that read: Dear HSLDA Members and Friends, With the 2008 election just around the corner, it is time to consider what we can do to change the direction of this nation. There are many close elections on both the state and national level. Among the important issues are the nomination of federal judges, abortion, and parental rights.

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It is imperative that we lay the groundwork to promote pro-family and pro-homeschooling candidates in the months leading up to the November 4th election day. HSLDA has a plan.

Some state and local organizations share HSLDA’s strategy to connect with other conservative groups. The president of a homeschool organization in the South explained to me, “We are not affiliated with the ‘Alliance Defending Freedom’ or ‘The Center for Law & Religious Freedom’ but many of our members are members of these and similar organizations. Similarly, we have many members who are involved in organizations that would have broad support among our membership, such as the right to life.” Abortion was not the only noneducation social issue that HSLDA addressed in member emails but not press releases. There were also twentyone member emails that addressed LGBT issues or same-sex marriage. When state legislators in Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment in 2005 to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, HSLDA wrote to members: Your right to homeschool rests on another freedom: the freedom to direct the education and upbringing of your children. Underlying your right to homeschool are parental rights, which are supported by the sanctity of marriage. Anything that undermines marriage may ultimately undermine parental rights and therefore threaten your freedom to homeschool.

HSLDA urged members in Wisconsin to call legislators and “give [them] this message: ‘Please vote for S.J.R. 53. Give citizens an opportunity to have their voices heard in support of preserving marriage.’  ” It shared similar information when legislators in Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington and federal legislators in Washington, DC, debated marriage equality bills. But the issue of marriage—once a core part of HSLDA’s agenda—has lessened its hold over time. After 2011, there is almost no mention of marriage equality issues by the organization, suggesting an evolving and more focused organizational strategy. The issue, however, is not going away for all

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homeschooling organizations. A board member of a homeschooling organization in the South explained: The gay agenda has begun to threaten homeschooling through a bill that claims to be against something defined as “Conversion Therapy.” This bill would prevent a parent from seeking help for their gender-confused child unless that professional help is designed to help the child identify as a homosexual. This Bill directly impacts the ability of a parent to care for their child. If they can regulate teaching in a counseling situation, it will not be long before they can do the same in a home teaching situation.21

Finally, though the organization has not taken a stand on whether vaccination is good or bad, HSLDA has frequently expressed opposition to policies that mandate vaccinations or even requirements that waivers from vaccination policies be granted by physicians. HSLDA supports parental freedom in this health issue as it does in other educational issues. In 2012, HSLDA wrote to California members, “Please vote no on AB 2109 (by Pan). I oppose requiring parents to arrange an office visit to obtain a doctor’s signature as a new condition for exempting their child from vaccinations.” HSLDA even opposed a meningococcal vaccination requirement for college students in Wyoming as a potential erosion of parental and student freedom. And interestingly, though gun rights are a solid fixture in the conservative movement, HSLDA only mentioned gun issues in two emails. The clearest explanation for the prevalence of these noneducational issues in member emails but not press releases is the potential mobilizing effects of connecting other ideologically conservative issues to homeschooling. Charter school organizations do not mention these issues at all.

R E L AT I O N S H I P T O G O V E R N M E N T Another way to compare the outside lobbying strategies of homeschool organizations and charter school groups is to consider the aspects of government on which they focus.

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By coding the press releases based on level of government (federal vs. state/ local) and branch of government (legislative vs. judicial vs. executive), we can see where such organizations focus their lobbying efforts. Homeschool organizations were much more focused on the judiciary and the courts (35 percent, compared to just 4 percent of charter school press releases) and the legislative branch (36 percent, compared to 27 percent of charter school press releases). On the other hand, charter school organizations (49 percent) were more likely to focus on the federal government compared to homeschool organizations (34 percent). The two types of groups were no different in how often they referenced state and local government or the executive branch. More interestingly, homeschool organizations, primarily HSLDA, were significantly more likely to focus on the failures of government or government overreach: 8 percent of homeschool press releases referred negatively to government control in some fashion, compared to just 3 percent of charter school press releases. HSLDA’s Michael Farris complained about the failure of a 1999 religious liberty bill to pass in the U.S. House: Conservatives who believe that they can protect religious freedom using the expansive reach of the Commerce Clause—the primary vehicle for every Big Government intrusion into the lives of citizens since the New Deal—cannot expect liberals to resist that same power when their own social agenda is at stake. If the religious beliefs of a home school, a Bible study group or an individual believer constitute interstate commerce, then there is nothing that the federal government cannot control.

When President Clinton vetoed an educational savings bill supported by HSLDA, a press release quoted Farris as saying, “Homeschooling parents will become the model upon which public school parents create a parentsonly organization and take back substantial control of public education from both the bureaucracy and unions. Otherwise, public schools will continue to lose public support until less than 50 percent of American children attend government-run schools.” Though this antigovernment rhetoric is not a large portion of the overall homeschool press releases, it does show how the two organizations

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communicate differently. Also interesting is that HSLDA relies upon this antigovernment rhetoric more in press releases (8 percent) than in emails (4 percent). This runs somewhat counter to expectations but is consistent with the earlier finding on use of the security/threat frame.

CONCLUSION Conventional wisdom suggests that many conservative interest groups are so well resourced that most of their activities are external, focused on direct inside lobbying to legislatures and campaign contributions. This may be the case for certain conservative policy areas, like those that involve business interests. But it is much less the case for conservative freedom policies. The groups that advocate for homeschooling and charter schooling rarely possess the resources to engage in inside lobbying, suggesting why they focus on their outside lobbying and communications strategies. Instead, homeschooling and charter schooling groups communicate information about policy. Though many would assume great similarity between the two types of groups, they frame their issues differently. National homeschooling groups frame policy support and opposition in the language of freedom and rights, while charter school groups use the language of choice and markets. Homeschooling groups are more likely to use a strategy of issue expansion by occasionally folding in noneducational issues, including socially conservative policy. Charter school groups are much more likely to confine themselves to educational issues, while homeschool organizations are more likely to express broader antigovernment views. This comports with the political history that preceded widespread adoption of each policy and the subsequent politics that was shaped by policy feedback effects. Language, of course, is not neutral. Invoking liberty or equality, efficiency or choice must all be taken with a grain of salt, and we must pay attention to the subtle messages within seemingly benign words. The legal scholar Ian Haney-Lopez explored the history of conservative activists using coded language to express implicitly negative sentiments

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about race, especially hostile views of African Americans.22 Homeschooling has largely been a policy taken up by white Americans, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. This is not to suggest that homeschoolers are typically racist. However, an interest-group communications strategy focused on parental rights and liberty, often hostile to the federal government, may tie homeschoolers to other policies with racial dimensions, like affirmative action, gun rights, or property rights. This chapter also showed possible differences within the homeschooling organization HSLDA, which has been a political powerhouse for several decades, dominating debates about homeschooling, even as some homeschoolers decry its heavy-handed strategies. The evidence presented here shows that HSLDA uses a different strategy for influencing the media and public opinion than it does when speaking to its own members. It has been more likely to frame policy based on freedom and liberty with internal audiences and more likely to frame policy based on rights and equity with external audiences. It is not easy to sort out exactly why these differences occur, but one reason may be the importance of constructing a social identity among members. As policy feedback theory suggests, interest groups that are created or strengthened because of a public policy decision can be instrumental in transforming how policy beneficiaries think about government, how they think about themselves as citizens, and what they value. Because homeschooling policy is related to the larger conservative movement and is designed outside of existing public institutions, crafting a social identity among homeschoolers using the values of individual liberty and personal freedom—and then connecting that to related policies on abortion and marriage—could serve larger political goals.

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6 STATE AND LOCAL MOBILIZATION AND POLICY CHANGE Homeschoolers are different than any other lobbying group. We are everywhere and part of everything.  .  .  . The other side totally underestimated us. We are not uneducated, hidden in some holler back in the woods. But whatever disadvantage we may possess, it is made up by the fact that our issue is 24/7, 365 days a year. — B O A R D M E M B E R O F A H O M E S C H O O L O R G A N I Z AT I O N I N T H E S O U T H 1

I

N F EB R U ARY 20 1 8 , the president of the Texas Homeschool Coalition, Tim Lambert, visited the radio studio of KFYO in Lubbock.2 News had just broken of a horrendous case of child abuse in California. The press had reported that, for years, a couple in Perris, a town southeast of Los Angeles, had brutally imprisoned their thirteen children while claiming to homeschool them.3 On air, Lambert reacted with understandable concern: “They have starved them, shackled them to the beds,” he said. “We have people all across the country calling for regulation of homeschoolers, not just academic regulations; they want annual visits to check up on these children.” In many parts of the country, homeschool policy prevents officials from the school district or social welfare or public health offices from entering private homes to assess homeschools except in the case of suspected abuse. In only twenty-four states is “failure to educate” a basis of abusive child neglect, including three of the states that are the focus of this book: Arkansas, Colorado, and West Virginia.4 Homeschool advocates have forcefully rejected calls for this type of oversight in the past, which they characterize as an infringement on parental freedom. In California, the alleged abuse seemed to have gone on for years, but there had been no red flags raised

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because no social worker had ever been in the home and the children had been literally walled off from neighbors. While conceding the tragedy of the California case, Lambert seemed to agree with existing restrictions on home visits, and he remained opposed to the calls for new regulations. He compared the situation to another familiar policy domain: “This reminds me of every time we have a shooting incident, we see the Left and the status [quo] come out and say we need to restrict people’s access to guns and this is exactly the same thing when it comes to education.” He argued that two liberal Republican state legislators, Kel Seliger and Ken King, were “the kind of guys who you would expect to support some kind of regulation or restriction on homeschooling.” He continued: “If you look at Kel Seliger’s voting record . . . he is really in lock-step with the teacher groups, the public school advocates, who believe we don’t need education reform, we don’t need more choices for families, we just need to give more money to the school districts.” Lambert suggested that the Texas Homeschool Coalition was “trying to activate the homeschool community” to oppose new restrictions and vote against hostile legislators running in upcoming Republican primary elections. Lambert was following a particular advocacy strategy to represent the interests of homeschoolers, a strategy that follows from the framing of national homeschool organizations presented in the last chapter. First, he minimized the problem: the Perris incident was an isolated case of abuse. Second, he connected the issue to another area of concern for many conservatives: gun rights. According to Lambert, just as opponents overreact to gun violence, education advocates overreact to problems in homeschooling, and they overcorrect in ways that infringe on freedom and liberty. Third, he politicized the issue, linking opposition to homeschooling to legislative opponents, in this situation meaning moderate Republicans who Lambert believed were aligned with teacher unions.5 Lambert’s work in Texas illustrates the importance of state and local politics for homeschooling policy. Whereas the previous two chapters focused on the organizational activities of national interest groups, this chapter moves closer to the point of instruction: state and local politics. We’ll consider the organizational ecology of each policy area, show the ways that

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these organizations mobilize people, and explain how this mobilization may relate to differences in policy change over time. If the organizational ecology of homeschooling and charter schooling is largely the same, then there is no reason to believe that the differences in policy design and also in national interest-group communications matter on the ground. Whether you choose to homeschool or charter school won’t matter to the array of organizations in place to support you. But if there are differences in the size and composition of the state and local organizations supporting homeschooling and charter schooling, then we have found another piece of evidence that feedback effects differ. Choosing to homeschool, then, would mean entering into a new (parallel) world of organizations formed to support your needs, provide you with information, represent your interests, and advocate for your common defense. This support should, consequently, relate to the durability of the policy over time: a more robust organizational ecology and mobilized community should win more than it loses, while a limited organizational ecology may face more policy losses and weakening of the policy over time. In the end, each piece of evidence here lines up with the general expectations of the theory of parallel politics and the effects of policy feedback.

S TAT E A N D L O C A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S While national organizations, like those analyzed in the last chapter, have a single federal policy central to their agenda, state and local education rules dictate much of education in the United States, including in homeschooling and charter schooling. As chapter 3 showed, there are great differences in school choice policy for homeschooling and charter schooling: some states require little oversight of those who opt in, while in others those who opt in are bound by policy to existing regulations such as mandatory testing, obligatory data reporting, and required teaching qualifications. Homeschooling policy is designed outside of existing institutions: public resources do not transfer to the homeschool, and rules on teaching and learning are almost

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always strictly limited. Charter school policies bind their operators, students, and parents within existing institutions, including public programs for finance, curriculum, and assessment. These differences create what we might call disparate state and local policy environments, with each offering distinct incentives for individuals to participate and interest groups to organize. These are examples of policy feedback. The last chapter showed how national organizations framed each policy issue, with homeschooling groups focusing on freedom and liberty and charter school organizations focusing on efficiency and the market. But the politics of each policy has not played out exclusively at the national level. State and local politics are central to all education policies, and these two policies are no exception. This chapter investigates the state and local organizations associated with homeschool and charter school policy: the organizations that provide services and associations that mobilize to lobby for policy change. As the board member who opened this chapter implied, the prevalence of state and local homeschooling organizations is a form of positive policy feedback, and investigating these associations allows us to view the underappreciated politics of homeschooling. As we’ve seen, the design of homeschool policy has given considerable freedom and autonomy to families who choose to educate at home. With that freedom comes almost no public financial support and often limited connections to public institutions, like access to textbooks used in public schools, public school facilities, and public school athletics.6 As a homeschool leader from the South told me, “There is no support from local public schools. . . . Homeschool parents are the sole administrator of their schools. There is no ‘outside’ support.”7 Families, presumably, begin educating at home knowing these rules, but they are still in need of support. Over time, the wall between homeschools and public schools has come down partially in many parts of the country, but homeschool policy design means that many divisions persist, as do many parental needs. The predicted effect of this design has been a set of strong incentives to develop parallel institutions that can provide these missing services. And this has been the case. In summarizing much of what is known about

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homeschooling, education researcher Kurt Bauman concluded that “the concomitant entry of new educational organizations into the field” has been one of the most notable aspects and effects of homeschooling policy.8 But the new organizations that formed have not been restricted to educational and extracurricular organizations. Many associations and politically oriented coalitions formed to advocate for homeschoolers. The high political engagement of homeschoolers manifested in the formation of new political organizations, and these benefited from a homeschool community eager for ways to participate. Take the work of Fran Eaton and the Illinois Christian Home Educators as an example. Freed from the standard district curriculum, families who homeschool in that state must find learning materials and lesson plans on their own. In 2000, Eaton addressed that need by developing a five-week online civics curriculum centered on the presidential election. Eaton was no political neophyte: as the head of the Illinois chapter of the Eagle Forum earlier in her career, she had learned political organizing from conservative movement legend Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly was likely pleased when thousands of families, reportedly, adopted Eaton’s lesson plans, which assigned points to students who completed activities like visiting the local Republican headquarters (200 points) and then volunteering on the campaign (200 points for each hour).9 One version of the curriculum (updated for the 2004 campaign) explained to parents that all of the lessons that involved student time should be rewarded. “However, there are a few projects that have been assigned a higher point value due to their importance in getting President Bush reelected.”10 Soon “Homeschoolers for Bush” emerged to tie these families together and mobilize them as a group to campaign. After his November victory, newly elected President Bush thanked these families in letters sent to participating homeschool organizations. Nearly twenty years later, many of those same organizers, some now grandparents, organized a new group of homeschool families to support Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign. The “Homeschoolers for Cruz” coalition mobilized nearly seven thousand families, including future Trump administration immigration official, Ken Cuccinelli.11

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Rules prevent public schools, including charter schools, from integrating such purposefully partisan activities into the curriculum, and this limits the chance for nonhomeschooling organizations to pursue this type of mobilization. The exemptions included in the policy design of homeschooling permit homeschooling organizations to mobilize politically.

F O R M A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S As with other aspects of homeschooling, counting organizations is more art than science. One way to count the most formalized homeschooling organizations is to focus on those that have legally incorporated as nonprofit organizations. For those that have completed the IRS paperwork (and that have annual revenues greater than a specified amount), one can easily collect publicly available data on a variety of organizational characteristics.12 Across the eight states chosen for this study, I found fifty-one formal nonprofit organizations registered with the IRS focused primarily on homeschooling (this is a low-bound estimate, since some nonprofits interested in homeschooling may not be easily identified as such by name or mission statement). Nearly all (90 percent) of these formal nonprofits are organized as 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charities, meaning that politics is not primary to their mission, while just 8 percent have the designation 501(c) (4) to indicate a political, rather than charitable, mission, and a handful had other 501(c) designations. Some of these nonprofits (28 percent) focus on recreational activities, like sports, music, and theater. These are some of the nonpolitical services that many families depend on to extend the learning and socialization of students beyond the home. More germane, a majority (58 percent) of the homeschooling nonprofits are set up as associations, coalitions, or alliances, suggesting they have a membership-based structure or pool together homeschool families or related organizations (see table 6.1). An example is the Lighthouse Christian Homeschool Association in Youngsville, North Carolina. These organizations typically provide a range of services to local homeschoolers, including help with

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TABLE 6.1 COMPARISON OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (EXCLUDING THOSE THAT OPERATE A SCHOOL) H O M E S C HOOL

CHARTER SCHOOL

NO NPR O FITS ( %)

NONP ROFITS ( %)

58 6 36

9 29 62

Formed as an association Formed as a parent-teacher group Formed as a philanthropic foundation or in some other way Source: Original analysis of IRS data from ProPublica.

curriculum, legal advice, and information on legislation. One local homeschool leader of a virtual organization in the Northeast explained to me, “Our group is not an actual face-to-face organization, so we just share information. Most of it is educational but some of it is about plumber recommendations and the like. We do not, as an organization, advocate in any way.”13 The sheer number of association-based homeschool nonprofits speaks to how the homeschool movement has built an organizational infrastructure to connect families, sometimes in the pursuit of collective political action, but not always. Homeschool nonprofits do not simply provide individual services, such as an organized athletic league; many aim to build connections and strong ties between homeschoolers. One volunteer with a homeschool organization in a western state described to me her family’s path to homeschooling: We didn’t know anything about other organizations, but as time went on, we were exposed to [the state organization] through their annual conference. [The state organization’s] vision and outreach was overwhelmingly the reason we could feel qualified to homeschool. After years of being blessed by [the state organization], we became involved as volunteers at the conference and our involvement grew from there.14

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The design of homeschooling policy created a need here. This family needed help, and the state organization could provide it through an array of services. This assistance built a relationship: the family contributed their ongoing time and energy to the organization. Charter school organizations are structured differently. Following the same procedure, I searched for all of the charter school–related nonprofits in the eight states. The first thing I noticed was that the majority of the nonprofits are the actual charter schools themselves. Charter schools are “public” in the sense that public funds provide the majority of revenue to operate most charter schools, yet they often have a legally incorporated dimension as “private” nonprofit organizations. Eighty-seven percent of the charter school–related nonprofits I found also operated one or more schools. Besides these charter school organizations, another set of organizations exists to support individual schools. Since public funds may not provide sufficient revenue to operate a charter school, these schools often need fundraising from other sources. Of the remaining 17 percent of charter school nonprofits, most are established as philanthropic foundations to do fundraising (or related school-focused management), such as Friends of Chester Community Charter School in Chester, Pennsylvania. Around a third (29 percent) of the remaining charter school nonprofits are parent-teacher organizations, such as Bromley East Charter School Parent Teacher Organization in Brighton, Colorado. As with the fundraising organizations, these organizations too usually focus on a single school. And just like the large majority of charter school organizations that operate schools, these groups are also linked to those same schools. Few of the charter school organizations operate in the way most homeschool organizations do. For example, just 9 percent organize as associations, alliances, or advocacy groups, like the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. This suggests that the organizational ecology associated with charter school policy contains fewer nonprofits focused on collective action. Relatively few charter school nonprofits connect multiple charter schools or link charter school families together. Most charter school nonprofits work for the particular needs—most often financial—of an individual school.

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Just as with the homeschooling organizations, there may be other charter school nonprofits that are too small to be counted or are established so informally that they have not legally incorporated. Still, far fewer charter school nonprofits are as broadly construed as the homeschool nonprofits that provide an array of services, especially when it comes to collective action, advocacy, and political representation. Most charter school nonprofits simply operate the school itself, relatively few provide other services, and those that do generally focus on fundraising. This difference speaks to the very different organizational ecologies of each policy area. It also reinforces what education policy researchers Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider found about charter school parents in Washington, DC, who developed stronger trust in and engagement with their child’s charter school but experienced no increase in general trust in government or political efficacy.15 Effects were narrowly school focused, reflecting the mission of many charter school organizations.

I N F O R M A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S Since the dynamic organizational activity discussed in this book is homeschool activity, I restricted my focus to that policy community but expanded it to other types of homeschool organizations. A second way to evaluate the size of the homeschooling organizational community is to estimate the total number of groups, including formal nonprofits and less formalized organizations that have not yet incorporated. To do this, I scraped data from several national homeschool organization websites that catalogue organizations across states, regions, and localities.16 Using this method, I identified over six hundred organizations focused on homeschooling in the eight states, an enormous number compared to the fifty-one formal nonprofits, and still likely not the full universe of homeschooling organizations. This number includes local, state, regional, and cross-state groups, as well as informal collectives operating in a single

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neighborhood with no permanent staff, office, or dedicated resources, outside of the volunteer time of parents. Informal groups typically form based on a sense of need in the community. For example, a homeschool leader from a rural part of the South told me, “We wanted a high-quality group for our own kids and saw the same need from other families. This drew us to create [the group].”17 Many of the early informal homeschool groups, some of which later converted to formalized 501(c)(3) nonprofits, continue to link parents together to provide the resources one needs to educate at home. Incorporating as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit may never be necessary or financially feasible for these types of groups, but the sense of shared values often is crucial to sustain the organization. The early days of homeschooling did not have the benefit of the Internet. Today, virtual organizations operate through a website, like a Yahoo newsgroup or Facebook group. These virtual organizations are relatively new, but they have been a major part of the homeschool organizational ecology since the mid-2000s. An organizer in a southern state said she believed that the Facebook group she ran allowed “more one-on-one interaction” than the formal organization on whose board she sat. These regular interactions helped her mobilize homeschoolers who sometimes ignored the newsletters shared by the formal organization.18 Since the mid-2000s and the rise of social media, networking platforms have transformed homeschooling civil society, just as they have for other social movements. Across the states, the number of homeschool organizations tracks with population size. Virginia and North Carolina have the largest number of organizations, 144 and 138, respectively (table 6.2). West Virginia and Arkansas have the fewest at 30 and 39, respectively. If you compare these organizational estimates to estimates of enrollment, North Carolina has nearly 9 organizations per 100 homeschooled students, Virginia has 2.32 organizations for every 100 homeschooled students, and Pennsylvania has 1.84 organizations for every 100—an indication of how organizationally active the movement is in each state. At the county level, Wake County in North Carolina has 14 organizations, Montgomery in Pennsylvania has 12, and Fairfax County in Virginia has 21. This also tracks with population density.

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TABLE 6.2 HOMESCHOOL INFORMAL/UNINCORPORATED

ORGANIZATIONS

North Carolina Arkansas West Virginia Wisconsin Washington Virginia Pennsylvania Colorado

NU M BE R O F H O M E S CH O O L

NUMBER OF HOMESCHOOL

O R GA NI ZATI O NS

O R GA N IZ ATIONS P ER 100 STUD ENTS

138 39 30 62 71 144 113 62

8.57 4.93 3.20 3.02 2.95 2.32 1.84 1.38

Source: Original analysis of data collected by the author.

These differences in the organizational ecology in each state fit with the differences in state policy design explained in chapter 3. Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have had low-regulation homeschool laws, while Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington have had high-regulation laws. In fact, it is in the low-regulation states that homeschool organizations are most numerous: all four have more than 3.00 homeschool organizations per 100 homeschool students. In contrast, in the four high-regulation states, the rate is fewer than 3.00, and in two states, Pennsylvania and Colorado, below 2.00. It is indisputable that in some cases the variation in the size of state organizations predated and thus contributed to the variation in policy design. And though there are likely other unrelated state-level factors that relate to organizational formation, this evidence suggests the role of different policy designs in the formation, maintenance, and power of organized homeschool groups. In states where families are given the most freedom and connected to government the least, they have a wider array of organized groups to turn to for support. With more groups at their disposal, homeschool families may be in a better position to support the political defense of the policy. Each individual group also benefits from the larger number of groups across

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the state, each additional group contributing to the collective action needed to advocate for continued weak regulations. This simple element of the strategy of parallel politics works: the greater the freedom, the greater the organizational might. The ecology of homeschooling organizations is large and varied. It includes formal nonprofits organized as associations and coalitions of homeschoolers, as well as hundreds of informal organizations. It includes virtual organizations operating online, connecting homeschoolers in local communities, and it includes private companies that support homeschoolers by selling curricular material—and likely supporting them in ways the data cannot capture.

POLICY CHANGE These varied formal and informal organizations operating at the national, state, and local levels are important because they provide needed services to parents, but some also mobilize parents and other supporters for collective action. Mobilization matters during the political wrangling over the adoption a new law or public policy—what political scientist Eric Patashnik and historian Julian Zelizer call the enactment phase—and much of the focus of political science research is rightly on this initial phase.19 But what happens after adoption—the postenactment phase—says a lot about policy feedback effects, and organizations that can continue to mobilize a community during this period are likely to cement the policy in place and fend off countermobilization. While a victory passing a new policy may bring short-term glory for partisans and advocates, it is the persistence of the policy over time that makes the long-term legacy. Organizations are especially important in first designing policy and later in defending the policy once pressure to change it mounts. The direction of policy changes according to which organizations are powerful and which supporters or opponents can best mobilize to pressure elected officials. A new policy will risk repeal if it does not encourage supportive civic

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organizing, while a new policy will stick if it strips opponents of resources or institutional support.20 Political scientists have tried to explain the variation and change in homeschool and charter school policies over time. Andrea Vieux explored the design of state regulation of homeschools by categorizing state policies based on whether parents are required to notify the government of intent to homeschool, which is one determinant of where the policy falls along a freedom-control continuum.21 She examined a cross-section of homeschool state policies in 2000 and found that the large size of the evangelical population correlated with less regulation, possibly the result of the ability of that religious community to pressure state legislators. Using a related methodology, Vieux found a similarly positive relationship between the less regulated charter school policy design and the state evangelical population.22 Even though the evangelical community has not been nearly as connected to charter schooling as to homeschooling, a similar correlation exists between these variables. Vieux and others also found that strong teacher unions in a state—which we might see as the clearest mobilized constituency pushing to regulate charter schools—correlate with stricter charter school laws.23 It makes sense that there is a relationship between these pro– and anti– school choice interest-group variables and policy design, though the crosssectional nature of the data used most often limits what we can take away, since policy is not static. Many different factors might shift the direction of policy over time. Just as interesting as understanding policy at its adoption is understanding how it changes afterward. What happens during the postenactment phase of public policy may include great changes in the direction of new policies, such as movement back to the original status quo or movement forward to entrench the new policy.24 The political scientist Thomas Holyoke and his coauthor Heath Brown provide another approach to understanding the change in charter school laws and the dynamic policy changes that occur each year as proponents and opponents jostle for control of the policy agenda.25 They take advantage of annual rankings of charter school laws issued by the Center for Education Reform (CER). Since 1996, CER has ranked each state law on a

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variety of factors to compare the flexibility or autonomy permitted to charter school operators. The consistent annual CER rankings let us compare policy change year by year, something that previous cross-sectional research could not do.26 Political scientists John Witte, Paul Shober, and Paul Manna showed that the measures used to generate these scores actually capture two competing dimensions of charter school policies: freedom from regulation and public accountability.27 Using the ranking data on freedom from regulation only, Holyoke and Brown found a pattern of policy convergence toward an equilibrium in charter school policy.28 As state policy makers make small adjustments in the law, they converge toward a somewhat common framework for regulating charter schools, with fewer outlying cases of high freedom/autonomy or high regulation. The convergence happens in part because groups representing teachers convince legislative allies to shift charter school policy in a more regulatory or control direction. Because resources are at stake, teacher unions have continued to push for revisions to charter school laws, advocating for stronger rules and more public oversight, as political scientist Terry Moe argues. “Once these programs are in place, moreover, the unions try to weaken them further and bring them down.”29 Not to be outdone, national advocacy groups, foundations supportive of charter schools, and national for-profit companies (educational management organizations), have been pulled into state and local policy debates as a result of the nationalization of politics generally and of education specifically.30 This has further accelerated the competitive postadoption political environment for charter school nonprofit organizations. At the same time, because charter schools are required to abide by common rules on testing and accountability, educational officials have had ample data to evaluate whether charter school policies are succeeding or failing. Much of the battle relating to charter schools after policy enactment, in fact, has been fought in legislative hearings and in the media over evidence and data, not in election campaigns. Jeffrey Henig explains that because charter schools straddle a line between public and private, this “has made charter schools a special focus of attention and helps draw them into ideological whirlpools that raise the stakes around the research into their

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actual form and consequences.”31 And political scientist Gary Miron argues that “strong and effective lobbying and advocacy groups for charter schools quickly reinterpret research and shape the message to fit their needs rather than the long‐term interests of the Movement.”32 Charter school nonprofits have themselves been active lobbyists in these battles, fighting alongside more traditional interest groups.33 Homeschooling policy change has worked differently, perhaps because most accept that homeschool policy has rarely, if ever, moved toward stricter regulation. Homeschool advocates are legendarily active in responding to any threat by state legislators to change policy, even policies that are only tangentially related to homeschooling. Michael Farris, the longtime leader of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), famously said, “To my knowledge, I can’t think of an occasion where we went backwards.”34 State leaders typically agree. One executive director of a statewide organization in the West told me: “We are primarily safe-guarding the freedoms we have. We are pretty satisfied with the law . . . there’ve been very few changes to that law.”35 We can see evidence of this success in the annual rankings of homeschool laws, which HSLDA began publishing in the early 2000s.36 As with the CER scores, there is a plausible argument that while the act of ranking may be politically motivated, the actual ranking values may be valid, since HSLDA has no obvious reason to distort them. HSLDA is unlikely to rank a state law as more or less favorable than the law actually is, since a low ranking is a chance to mobilize homeschooler supporters to act and a high ranking is a chance to take credit for effective policy influence. Moreover, the somewhat politically motivated ranking done by HSLDA correlates with the nonpartisan ranking of homeschool laws by the Education Commission of the States. Since ECS has not ranked each year, the HSLDA annual rankings provide a second-best way to evaluate policy change over time. If we examine these annual rankings, we can clearly see that there is very little movement within most state homeschool laws. Policies persist. HSLDA ranks states on a spectrum. At one end are states requiring no notice; then come states with low regulation; then states with moderate regulation; and finally states with high regulation, such as require notification,

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mandatory assessment, curriculum requirements, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials. In 2007, the District of Columbia moved from low to moderate regulation after legislators changed the district’s policy to require annual notification by parents and maintenance of an educational portfolio. In no other case did HSLDA judge a state’s policy as increasing regulation (New Hampshire went from moderate to high regulation in 2009, but went back to moderate in 2011). Twenty percent of the states (AR, GA, IA, ME, MN, ND, PA, UT, WA, and WV) reduced homeschool regulations between 2002 and 2017. The remaining state policies were unchanged according to the HSLDA ranking, suggesting that the status quo held in most states over that fifteen-year period. This ranking starts many years after these states first adopted homeschooling policies, and changes may have occurred in those early years. But nevertheless, since 2002 the dominant pattern of homeschool policy has been stasis or deregulation. Compare this pattern of homeschool regulations to charter school laws over time (see figure 6.1). CER has ranked state charter school laws since 1996. Around 45 percent of states saw nearly no policy change, each starting with high regulation and ending with high regulation. For the remaining states, there was noticeable convergence over time: both high-regulation and high-freedom states moved to more moderate positions. In the 2002 CER rankings, seven states (AZ, DE, MN, DC, MI, IN, MA) received an A (an indication of a low-regulation policy). Fifteen years later, by 2017, just three states (DC, AZ, and IN) still held A scores. The rest had become Bs.37 In 2002, just a single state, Mississippi, scored an F. By 2017, five states received an F (AK, VA, KS, MD, and IA). Scores converged and moved toward regulation because of lobbying and policy revision, which usually meant state laws incorporating new information about the success of charter school students. Importantly, and by policy design, there have been considerably more comparable data on charter schools than on homeschools, meaning that opponents of homeschools have had less evidence of failure (or success) around which to base their arguments about policy change. This is an element of the feedback effects of designing charter school policy within existing institutions compared to designing homeschool policy outside of existing institutions. See also figure 6.1.

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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Charter school policy

Homeschool policy

No change in regulation Decrease in regulation Increase in regulation

F I GU RE 6. 1

Percentage of states changing homeschool (2002–2017) and charter school (2002–2019) policy regulation

A CASE OF CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY CHANGE These differences in policy change and the role of organizations can be better understood by comparing cases of state policy change. Charter school policy in Washington State has traveled a rocky path. Washington was a latecomer to the charter school game, passing its first law in 2012, over a decade after most states had enacted similar legislation.38 The long wait for charter schools to arrive in the state was in part a result of the lobbying against the policy by opponents. Once the law was adopted by ballot initiative, opponents were not quieted but continued to advocate against charter schools.

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One strategy was to shift their focus from electoral and legislative venues to the courts. In 2015, opponents of the law, including the League of Women Voters, the Washington Association of School Administrators, the Washington Education Association, and El Centro de la Raza (a civil rights organization based in Seattle), challenged the state constitutionality of the charter school law. They charged that charter schools should not be counted as “common schools” because they were not accountable to local school officials, and thus should not be eligible for the public funding constitutionally mandated by the state to schools with this designation.39 In essence, opponents argued that the 2012 law had pushed charter schools too far outside of existing institutions governing public education, so far that they no longer warranted the support of public funds. The design of the law placed charter schools in the precarious middle, opening them to this challenge in the courts. The court largely agreed with the opponents and ruled the public funding provisions of the law unconstitutional. It explained, “Under the Act, money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools.”40 Legislators supportive of charter schools quickly amended the bill, shifting the stream of funding from the budget for “common schools” to another fund supported by revenues from the state lottery. This change satisfied the lower courts, which ruled in favor of the amended policy, but opponents remained unsatisfied and appealed the case to the state supreme court. What is most notable about the charter school debate in Washington is the way in which the design of the policy exposed it to counter-mobilization by opponents. Because the law gave charter school operators freedom from educational rules and public oversight yet also provided public funds, opponents had a legal, economic, and political basis to challenge the law. Legally, the state’s constitutional provisions on public education remained germane to the operations of these independent schools and thus positioned the courts as a venue for opposition. Economically, public funds, once intended exclusively for “common schools,” were now diverted to alternative schools, raising the concerns of civil rights groups such as El Centro de la Raza, which worried about the impact of charter schools

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on social justice and equity.41 And politically, because charter schools were not directly accountable to publicly elected officials on local school boards, other organizations outside of educational advocacy became involved, such as the League of Women Voters. Thus, policy feedback effects were not contained among charter school advocates, and opposition was not restricted to just associations representing public school teachers and administrators. The plaintiffs in the cases challenging the state’s charter school law and lobbying to restrain charter schooling in the state were sufficiently varied and well resourced to maintain opposition and block full implementation of the policy for several years.

A CASE OF HOMESCHOOL POLICY CHANGE In comparison, homeschool policy has been dominated by homeschool advocates and has rarely faced staunch and organized opposition. Milton Gaither described a confrontation during the 1980s in Oregon over a bill to repeal homeschooling policy. He attended some hearings on the legislation and wrote that “the 140-person room was always filled to capacity and the halls outside lined with homeschoolers voicing their objectives to this effort to undo their legislative gains.” Supporting the bill opposed to homeschooling were the lobbyists representing just two associations in the state, not the varied opposition seen in Washington State.42 In the end, the Oregon homeschool policy remained intact and the homeschoolers were victorious, a story that can be retold in countless other states from the earliest days of homeschooling policy. When I interviewed a homeschool leader in a southern state, she explained how this rapid mobilization to defend homeschool policy works two decades later with the help of new media. Typically, the national group, HSLDA, communicates an issue of concern with members in a state, possibly a piece of legislation that might harm homeschool policy. Since the early 2000s, local and state organizational leaders have received those messages via email and then decided whether to mobilize. The homeschool

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leader said, “I rile them up. . . . I don’t let them sit back and do nothing. I say, ‘Listen, this is what we need to get done.’ ”43 On one recent issue, fifteen homeschoolers quickly arrived in the state capitol, and within a short time, the worrisome change in policy was removed. The homeschool leader attributed this success to the power of social media, such as her large Facebook group, and the trust the members have placed in her to be knowledgeable about homeschool policy issues: “Telling them what they are not seeing, they know I am personally at the capitol. . . . They know I am truthful.”44

*** This chapter focused on additional expected effects of policy feedback: state and local organizational formation. Homeschool organizations were key to the rise of homeschooling. From national-level organizations like HSLDA and Practical Homeschooling magazine to state, local, and virtual organizations, homeschooling has been a civil society success story. In contrast, the organizations around charter schools are usually more focused on the operation and financial support of individual schools. Building on the findings from the last chapter, we can say that the messages homeschool organizations share with parents, students, the media, and the public matter. Communication frames issues and shapes political mobilization and the formation of distinct identities. Homeschool parents reading information from many homeschool organizations will not be convinced to remain at home; rather, the clear message is to remain active and vigilant, prepared to march to defend their liberty. And this approach appears to pay off, with hundreds of organizations ready to mobilize parents to stave off policy change. Homeschoolers rarely seem to lose a policy battle, in part because of this mobilization, but also because they face much weaker resistance and less counter-mobilization, another potential effect of the policy design anticipated in chapter 3.

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7 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND COMMUNITY EFFECTS There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools.1 —KEVIN WILLIAMSON

B

EF OR E H ER CA R E E R in Washington and stint as the national face of the Tea Party, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann attended Oral Roberts University. In the early 1980s, the brand-new Christian-affiliated university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, introduced Bachmann to the growing conservative legal movement and the idea of home educating. She researched homeschooling laws with her classmate Christopher Klicka, the future leader of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), and would carry this research area into her studies at law school.2 Thanks, in part, to the work of HSLDA, homeschooling was legal in the country by the time she was raising her five children. She chose to educate them at home and advocated for homeschooling in Congress when she went to Washington.3 Elected to represent Minnesota’s Sixth District in 2006, Bachmann faced a stiff reelection campaign in 2008. It was homeschoolers who came to her rescue. The HSLDA offshoot, Generation Joshua, sent seventy-two student campaigners to Minnesota to knock on doors and wrangle the conservative vote. When interviewed by HSLDA’s Michael Farris about the campaign, Bachmann graciously credited the students: “Whether they’re picking up the phone making the all-important calls or whether they’re out going door to door, they do an incredible amount of work in a really short amount of time. . . . And thanks to Generation Joshua volunteers, they help us become

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confident that we’ll reach more people and meet our voter contact goals before the polls close on Election Day.”4 Bachmann won reelection that year, and she soon hitched her political future to an emerging movement called the Tea Party. The Tea Party harnessed a groundswell of rage aimed at Washington, especially the new president, Barack Obama, and Congress. Bachmann positioned herself as the voice of the movement on Capitol Hill.5 In the run-up to the 2010 midterms, Bachmann formed the House Tea Party Caucus, coordinating several dozen sympathetic members of Congress and an influx of new members elected that November. After President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, Congressman Paul Ryan spoke for the Republican Party, and Bachmann delivered a response on behalf of the Tea Party. “The Tea Party is a dynamic force for good in our national conversation,” she said.6 At the helm of this rising faction in the GOP, Bachmann launched her presidential campaign in 2012. Again, homeschooling was a load-bearing beam in her plans. Bachmann followed the model of electoral organizing that Governor Mike Huckabee had used to win the Iowa caucuses four years earlier in 2008,7 wielding homeschool organizations and volunteers in what the New York Times called “a kind of miniature political machine.”8 As Michael Farris of HSLDA explained to the New York Times, “Homeschool families are making [Huckabee’s] campaign into one giant homeschool field trip. . . . They are making a family activity, a civics lesson out of it, if you will. Manning phone banks. Passing out literature. Talking him up in church.”9 Bachmann did the same, courting homeschoolers in the state and relying on them as she had in 2008 to drum up support for her Tea Party–inspired campaign. Though she eventually came in sixth in the state, Bachmann’s campaign represented the convergence of local homeschooling with the national politics of the Tea Party. (I should note that Bachmann was also accused of stealing a list of email addresses from a homeschool organization in Iowa; she later settled the case out of court.)10 Though the Tea Party—a new home for disenchanted conservatives and libertarians sick of government and societal changes—became a media phenomenon after the election of

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Barack Obama, homeschoolers in fact held dear these same views decades before the Tea Party movement. Some commentators commended the Tea Party as a grassroots revelation, a sign that Americans were still committed to civic organizing and challenging the status quo.11 But homeschoolers had been at the civic game since the 1980s, and they believe they challenge the education status quo on a daily basis. The homeschooling movement did not get the attention of other movements, but it may have been just as much a cornerstone in the foundation of recent radicalism. There are clear ways to connect homeschooling to the rise of the Tea Party, but if the theory of parallel politics is right, there should be other areas in which we can observe the influence of homeschoolers. If these families have opted out, but not dropped out, then there may be ongoing interactions with the neighborhoods and towns in which they live but do not attend the public school. This is an extension of the idea of policy feedback. This chapter examines three pieces of evidence to determine whether the earlier findings on homeschooling organizations, issue framing, and policy change can all be tracked to other outcomes. Specifically, it examines whether the political attitudes and behaviors of homeschool families are different from others and whether parts of the country where homeschooling has thrived have distinct patterns of democratic participation and Tea Party activism. To be sure, as is the case of many studies of policy feedback, homeschooling policy does not lend itself to the several methods used to draw bright lines between cause and effect, such as randomly designed experiments or large-scale panel studies. Individual-level data on homeschooling are too sparse and homeschooling families too private to apply those methods. Also, because there are few tangible government benefits distributed for homeschoolers, there is no way to exploit the random or quasi-random distribution of benefits to identify causation. Instead, this chapter seeks to triangulate a mix of available evidence. If these various pieces of evidence all point in the same direction as predicted earlier in the book, it is reasonable to believe the core argument about parallel politics. This evidence falls into three categories: individual data on political behavior and attitudes of those who opt to homeschool; county data on

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voter turnout in communities with high and low homeschooling enrollment; and county data on Tea Party activism, a related conservative political movement. If, as the theory of parallel politics predicts, the political behavior of those who homeschool differs from the political behavior of others, if community voter turnout weakens, and if Tea Party activism rises, then a case has been made that homeschooling policy is prone to policy feedback effects.

HOMESCHOOLERS IN THE COMMUNITY Political scientists must see homeschoolers as they are, embedded within larger communities, neighborhoods, towns, and counties. Parents make the decision to homeschool as individuals, but the consequences of that decision are rarely contained in the home. In West Virginia, school closures and school consolidation have been blamed on the rise of homeschooling, and, at the same time, homeschooling has been offered as a way for parents to respond to the loss of a nearby public school.12 In Alabama, a local newspaper reported public schools losing nearly one hundred students to homeschooling following changes in homeschool policy. In small districts, even this small a loss has consequences. According to the school superintendent, “We have been seeing a trend of students leaving for homeschooling and virtual school programs over the last three to four years. The legislature changed some of the rules and we have seen a lot more in the county.”13 Former classmates and teachers, neighbors far and near, may all bear the cost or reap the benefit of these choices. Scholars have speculated about the relationship between analogous conservative policies and spillover effects. As noted earlier in the book, political scientists Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram suggest that there may be negative policy feedback when policy shifts the delivery of service from traditional government to nongovernmental contractors.14 And Kristin Goss contends that policies that encourage volunteerism and the role of civil society in delivering social services may unintentionally weaken

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support for the welfare state, as people turn away from government in favor of private services.15 We might infer from Schneider, Ingram, and Goss that because homeschooling has much in common with third-party policies and volunteerism, there may be similar policy feedback effects for homeschooling. Those directly and indirectly involved in homeschooling may develop the same type of “alienation” toward government and learn to “devalue” public institutions. And, in fact, it is on this point that education scholar Michael Apple criticizes homeschooling because of its similarity to other privatization measures: “In essence, [homeschooling] is the equivalent of gated communities and of the privatization of neighborhoods, recreation, parks, and so many other things.”16 The libertarian, separatist streak that runs through the homeschooling movement suggests that, as rates of homeschooling rise in a community, they generate negative policy feedback for others in the community. Political scientist Scott Abernathy finds just this result when he applies political scientist Albert O. Hirschman’s “exit, voice, loyalty” framework to those who participate in school choice.17 He argues that the “exiters” opting to leave public schools are often the most civically engaged, but after leaving they may become more private with their civic participation, limiting their activities to the new charter or private school. This “privatization of voice” suggests negative feedback effects for the larger community in which homeschooling thrives. To test this possibility, Abernathy compared the voter turnout between charter school districts and non–charter school districts. He reveals that those parents leaving for charter schools were particularly active in the operations of their new schools, an indication that they may be more civically engaged than those who remain in existing public schools (others, like political scientists James Cox and Christopher Witko, find that parents who opt into a new private school have higher rates of political participation but not those who opt into new public schools).18 Although Abernathy cautions that the findings are not causal, when he examined the larger patterns of electoral participation, he discovered that voter turnout was 22 percent higher in charter school districts compared to non–charter school districts.19 In contrast, more recent research from Ohio shows that

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increases in charter school enrollment are associated with small declines in the number of votes cast and in voter turnout in school board elections.20 As we know, charter schooling and homeschooling are related but very different educational policies, each with its own policy designs and political context. Abernathy’s studies are also drawn from a relatively early point in the development of school choice, the 1990s. Still, one takeaway from his findings is the significant relationship between educational reforms and seemingly unrelated political outcomes, like voter turnout. And these effects are not always contained within the community of those who opt in. The larger public, including those who do not opt in, must also confront the changes brought about by choice-based policies. Parallel politics is not a politics of total retreat from the public square, but partial retreat. The new paths intersect with existing routes, sometimes unexpectedly, but often by design. How does this partial retreat explain the relationship between homeschool policy, participation in homeschooling, and community political feedback effects? Once state policy makers pass homeschool policy, this right away creates incentives for organizing and forming civic groups to advance the interests of homeschoolers. While homeschool enrollment remains low, there will be only a few feedback effects on the larger community. But as participation grows, supported by new civic groups, there are likely to be positive feedback effects within the community of homeschool parents and children and spillover effects in the larger community, some positive and some negative. Since new homeschooling civic groups have an interest in strengthening the policy, they often mobilize homeschoolers, encouraging higher participation in campaigns and elections. Political scientists Suzanne Mettler and Joe Soss describe this effect as the power of policy feedback for “building and distributing civic skills.”21 Policy feedback also can confer group membership and particular identities, so that now those adopters of the policy think of themselves differently. In this case, families who opt to educate at home may come to think of themselves as homeschoolers, and with that identity comes the associated libertarian and socially conservative design of the policy. Chapter 5 showed some of the ways that homeschool organizations do just this: communicate with the homeschool community using specific and distinct messages and framing.

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And then there are the nonhomeschoolers—the public—in communities where homeschooling is on the rise. Eventually they may well suffer negative feedback effects: declining civic activity and weakening of democratic participation—the opposite of the positive policy feedback associated with many other social policies. Why would this happen? First, the community may suffer what political scientists call civic loss; as residents see neighbors leave public schools— taking with them once-shared affiliations—communities are drained of important civic capital and the value that capital provides for community participation.22 Second, as a larger share of a community interacts with the rising number of homeschoolers and homeschool civic groups, the libertarian, anti-institutional political views may spread from the homeschool community to others, often through personal networks like church groups. This is a type of antigovernment contagion that can metastasize in a community and undermine public support for government and democratic participation.23 In the longer run, these transformed communities may elect candidates for office who share these views—creating new electoral representation—and those representatives will legislate accordingly, limiting public spending and programs and further eroding community confidence in government. It may not even be necessary for a majority of the community to share these views—all it takes is a vocal, energized, and organized minority. When might we expect these negative effects to occur? Political scientists Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the proximity and salience of public policy determine its feedback effects.24 When citizens directly experience a public policy in action (what Soss and Schram call high proximity)—even if they are not directly served—they are most likely to respond. When citizens remain distant from a public policy (low proximity), unaware whom the policy benefits or how those benefits are received, they are unlikely to be moved to advocate one way or the other for the policy. Then there is salience. Policies that are highly visible or match public priorities are said to be salient, and these are likely to generate feedback effects. Policies that are low salience—not visible or a match to public priorities—will not.

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How does homeschooling policy fit into this description? In many communities where relatively few opt to educate at home, the wider public would be distant from the choice of just a handful of families—low proximity. As education scholars Bruce Cooper and John Sureau write, “Homeschooling in most places is invisible.”25 However, as the rate of homeschool enrollment grows—in some counties approaching 10 percent of total school enrollment—a larger portion of the community will know families who homeschool, interact with homeschool organizations, and witness the impact of homeschooling, all of which lead to high proximity. Rising proximity may cause friction with local public schools. A local homeschool leader from a southern state explained it to me like this: Public schools take a more adversarial approach to homeschooling families. Our school district is in financial distress and is actively recruiting homeschool families to enroll in distance learning programs in order to capitalize on the money they would then receive from the state. This benefits the schools, but since enrolled students would then be under the responsibility of the public school system, the rights and freedoms of homeschool families are eroded.26

Salience is most relevant to the speed of change in homeschooling. In some communities, homeschooling may grow incrementally, rising by a small percentage year after year, and this is likely to draw little attention or garner much salience. But in a community where homeschooling enrollment rises quickly, even if the share of homeschoolers remains small, that may draw attention from the mass public. In Alamance County, North Carolina, homeschooling enrollment nearly doubled from 1,310 to 2,153 in just five years, from 2013 and 2018. And in White County, Arkansas, over that same time enrollment grew 50 percent to 1,400 students. It is in this condition of material consequence for a community but muted public conversation among local residents that we might predict the direction of the feedback effect.27 Since the mass public will witness relatively large numbers of neighbors leaving public schools but not hear about

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it on the news or see the issue debated widely, these conditions may demobilize the mass public and dampen public participation. In these situations, there are likely to be visible outcomes associated with homeschooling: negative outcomes, like an elementary school forced to close because of low enrollment, or positive outcomes, like a public library offering special services to homeschoolers. In a 2007 letter to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle, Sandy Morley of Lenox, Massachusetts, wrote: As a mother of three girls ages 6, 7 and 11, I rely on the Lenox Library to make our homeschooling lifestyle financially possible by providing us with a significant portion of our curriculum, amounting to more than 300 items each calendar year. . . . My husband and I will be at the upcoming Town Meeting in May to vote to keep this wonderful asset to our community alive and well.28

In communities like Lenox, the mass public will know people who homeschool and hear about them, whether in a community meeting, from the newspaper, or even from an active homeschool organization. Homeschooling will not remain hidden from anyone in these towns, and the active engagement of homeschoolers in civic life and the potential counter-mobilization of the defenders of public schools might generate tangible outcomes, possibly more political participation and civic engagement. At the same time, homeschool families who become more politically active through interactions with homeschool organizations may later seek out more ways to participate in politics, especially in partisan political activities, such as by supporting campaigns and running for office. There are also positive feedback effects from homeschool policy advocates learning how to effectively mobilize people. One homeschool leader said that her initial work lobbying for gun rights policy introduced her to lobbying for homeschooling: I joined the [the state] Citizens Defense League that lobbies for Second Amendment rights . . . that got me interested in politics, lobbying with them got me down to the Capitol, that got me into lobbying for

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homeschool rights. Through them I learned more about government and how to get people riled up, how to get people involved.  .  .  . [Citizens Defense League] has taught me a lot, now I am trying to pull that over to the homeschoolers and how to get them active.29

This statement reinforces the reality that homeschooling policy does not exist in a vacuum. It may be the case that increases in homeschooling tend to happen at the same time that other local changes occur, and that both are correlated with changes in participation and support for government. If some homeschoolers are leaving public schools in response to changing school demographics—or the perceived consequences of these changes— then a rise in homeschooling may not be the cause of changes in community attitudes but rather a symptom of a more complex social phenomenon.

H O M E S C H O O L FA M I LY P O L I T I C S A N D PA R T I C I PAT I O N To investigate whether these types of effects are happening, I first look at policy feedback among individuals. This is a difficult effect to identify, because the same characteristics that lead one to participate—in this case those most cynical about government may be the most likely to choose to homeschool—may also be an expected effect of participation. Educating at home may lead to hostile views about government. Distinguishing between cause and effect is tricky business. Nevertheless, previous scholars have examined aspects of homeschooling attitudes, especially the most frequent worry about the socialization of students who are educated at home and whether absence from public schools deters various forms of civic participation.30 There is no consensus on these worries, but research suggests that the deep fears about total isolation are unfounded. Education scholars Bruce Cooper and John Sureau write, “Despite political pressure to conform, homeschool families have become well informed, active, and influential.”31 One of the most frequently cited studies, by Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research

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Institute (NHERI), found that adults who had been homeschooled were more likely to vote and join civic groups: indications of effective socialization.32 That study did not address other important confounding factors, like income or race, that might explain variation in the political participation of homeschoolers. To address this limitation, sociologists Christian Smith and David Sikkink used a national survey of students conducted in the 1990s to control for other factors that might relate to participation. The authors found that homeschoolers were more likely to be involved in a variety of civic activities than public school students:33 most home schoolers are not at all isolated . . . most are embedded in dense relational networks of homeschooling families; participate in local, state, regional, and national home schooling organizations; and engage in a variety of community activities and programs that serve the education of their children. . . . Far from being privatized and isolated, home schooling families are typically very well networked and quite civically active.34

There has been little conclusive research on the political attitudes of homeschool families, though fears that homeschool alumni would be more “politically intolerant” also have not been borne out.35 While one may assume that most homeschoolers are ideologically conservative, members of the Republican Party, and supporters of Republican candidates for office, research has not demonstrated that these things are true. Most large-scale studies of political behavior have not addressed homeschooling or charter schooling, so we have not been certain how homeschoolers vote and charter schoolers vote, either the parents or the students once they are old enough. The General Social Survey (GSS) included a question on homeschooling in 1998 and 2000, but it did not repeat the question in subsequent surveys. Based on these data, 47 percent of parents who had a homeschooled student at the time reported thinking of themselves as Republicans, either strongly or otherwise, and 57 percent had voted for Senator Bob Dole in the previous presidential election. But the response rate from homeschool parents in the

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GSS was small and the homeschooling question was not included again, so we can’t tell much from the data. The American National Election Studies (ANES), fielded every two years for decades, are the gold standard of representative sample surveys of American political views on elections, voting, and politics, including questions of party registration, vote choice, and views on public policy and ideology. For the first time in 2012, the designers of the survey added a question that asked whether an adult respondent had school-age children and then, if they did, whether the children were enrolled in public, private, or homeschool (charter school was not an option). In 2016, the survey repeated the question on mode of education, but again did not offer charter schools as an option. With that question, I could compare those respondents who homeschool their children to those who do not. Because the number of respondents who answered “yes” to the homeschool question was relatively small, I restricted my analysis to basic descriptive statistics and limited bivariate comparisons. First, using the ANES data, we can estimate whether parents who homeschool are more likely to be ideologically conservative, members of the Republican Party, or supporters of Republican presidential candidates. Based on data collected prior to the election in 2012, more than half (58 percent) of homeschool parent respondents were registered Republicans (table 7.1). This is significantly more than the third (30 percent) of other respondents. While a small majority of homeschool parents reported an official connection to the Republican Party, a much larger portion identified as ideologically conservative. Nearly three-quarters (70 percent) self-identified as conservative in 2012, a considerably larger percentage than the rest of respondents. The party and ideological affiliations of homeschool parents are reflected in other ideological beliefs. In 2012, 81 percent of survey respondents who homeschooled believed that there should be “more emphasis on traditional family values,” compared to 64 percent of other parents (see note to table 7.1 for the statistical significance of all percentages cited). Three-quarters (72 percent) of homeschool parents said that gun laws should not be changed or relaxed:

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TABLE 7.1 HOMESCHOOL PARENTS’ POLITICAL VIEWS AND CIVIC ACTIVITY

COMPARED TO OTHER PARENTS H O M E S CH O O L PA R ENTS ( %)

OTHER RESP OND ENTS ( %)

58* 70**

30 32

81**

64

72**

53

50***

25

19**

8

40**

14

57**

45

Registered Republican in 2012 Self-identify as conservative in 2012 Percent agreeing with following statements: There should be more emphasis on traditional family values. The government should “keep gun laws the same” or “make it easier to buy a gun.” There should be no legal recognition of a gay or lesbian couple’s relationship. Federal spending on public schools should be decreased. Federal spending on the environment should be decreased. Federal spending on welfare programs should be decreased.

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01 Source: American National Election Studies (ANES), 2012 and 2016 data.

56 percent said that the government should keep gun laws the same, and 16 percent said the government should make it easier to buy a gun, compared to 53 percent of other parents. And half (50 percent) of homeschool parents said that there should be no legal recognition of gay marriage, compared to a quarter (25 percent) of other parents. And what about homeschool parents’ views on government expenditures, specifically, whether parents are more likely to support increases or decreases in spending on education or other public programs? In 2012, though most were supportive of keeping funding the same, homeschool parents were more likely to support reductions in spending on public schools than others: a fifth (19 percent) of homeschool parents compared to less than

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a tenth (8 percent) of others reported that federal support for public schools should be decreased. Interestingly, on the question of federal spending for other social programs, including Social Security, science and technology, child care, and crime, homeschool views were statistically no different from other views. But on federal spending for the environment, a much larger percentage of homeschool parents (40 percent) supported cutting spending compared to others (14 percent). And on welfare, a majority (57 percent) of homeschool parents supported cuts in federal spending compared to 45 percent of others. Overall, homeschool parents are not significantly different when it comes to their views of most federal spending, but when it comes to spending on public schools, welfare, and the environment, they are less supportive of increases in spending than other parents. To sum up: homeschool parents are typically ideologically conservative and politically conservative on key policy issues like family values, gun rights, and gay marriage. But how do homeschoolers vote? The ANES asks respondents about their votes in previous elections. For comparability, I looked specifically at presidential vote choices. The preelection 2012 ANES survey shows that 66 percent of homeschool respondents who had voted in 2008 recalled that they had chosen the Republican candidate Senator John McCain (table 7.2). In the 2012 postelection survey, 61 percent of homeschool parents

TABLE 7.2 HOMESCHOOL PARENT VOTING IN RECENT ELECTIONS

Voted for McCain for president in 2008 Voted for Romney for president in 2012 Voted for Trump for president in 2016

H O M E S CH O O L PA R E NTS (%)

OTHER RESP OND ENTS ( %)

66**

42

61**

45

62**

40

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01 Source: American National Election Studies (ANES), 2012 and 2016 data.

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who voted indicated that they chose Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate. And in 2016, the postelection survey revealed that 62 percent of homeschool parents who voted chose the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump. The consistency of these results suggests that though only a minority of homeschool parents self-identified as Republicans, a majority voted for Republican presidential candidates in each of the last several presidential elections. What we learn from these survey data is not surprising. Homeschool parents are conservative, in ideology and certain policy attitudes, and lean in the direction of the Republican Party. They oppose increases in some forms of federal spending, but not most. These findings confirm what anecdotal and previous research has suggested about homeschool parents, but they do not necessarily confirm the theory of policy feedback. Because of the limited survey data, it is impossible to draw causal conclusions about whether opting into homeschooling transformed the views of these parents. There does appear, though, to be a correlation between personal demographics, certain political attitudes and behaviors, and homeschooling, but there is no way to mine these nonexperimental, cross-sectional data to sort out whether more conservative parents choose to homeschool, which seems likely, or whether parents who homeschool become more conservative, which also seems like a possibility. Or maybe it’s some combination of both. More important to the question of policy feedback effects is whether the conservative part of the homeschooling world, where the prominent political advocacy organizations like HSLDA are most active, is any different from other groups of conservatives who do not homeschool. If there are no real differences, then homeschooling may just be one of a series of policies that conservatives choose, but not a source of policy feedback. To examine this question, I looked just at the segment of conservative homeschoolers and compared them to other conservative respondents to the ANES surveys in 2012 and 2016. In responses to several survey questions, there were no differences, including perceptions of government corruption, trust in people, and the importance of elections to make the government pay attention. Conservative homeschoolers were no different from other conservatives.

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However, some other suggestive patterns did emerge from additional questions, though the small number of respondents limits strong conclusions. What seems evident is that many conservative homeschoolers pursue a type of parallel politics: rejecting government and many conventional forms of community engagement in favor of private community involvement and a quite activist political engagement. First, conservative homeschoolers seem to be more alienated from government than other conservatives. For example, in 2012, a little less than a third (31 percent) of conservative homeschoolers strongly agreed that public officials did not care what people think, compared to a fifth (20 percent) of conservatives (table 7.3). This rose to 36 percent compared to 21 percent in 2016. When asked how often the respondent trusted Washington to do what’s right, 82 percent said never or just some of the time, compared to 69 percent of conservatives overall. Conservatives are dubious about public officials and Washington; conservative homeschoolers are especially doubtful. Second, when it comes to conventional participation in community affairs, conservative homeschoolers are largely absent. When asked about attendance at school or community meetings, fewer than one in five (16 percent) said yes, compared to one in three conservatives (31 percent). Only a quarter of conservative homeschoolers (25 percent) had recently done “community work,” compared to more than a third (38 percent) of conservatives. In the ways we most commonly think of community engagement, conservative homeschoolers seem to have opted out. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, despite the alienation and limited involvement in community affairs, conservative homeschoolers do participate. In fact, they do so quite actively, though in somewhat unconventional ways. Overall, they are more likely to join a group, donate to a charity, contact officials in government, and participate in a protest. In 2012, for example, three-quarters of conservative homeschoolers (75 percent) were a member of at least one organization, compared to just over a majority (57 percent) of conservatives; four years later that difference held. This participation is reflected in charitable giving. Nearly all of the conservative homeschool respondents (94 percent) had recently contributed to a church

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TABLE 7.3 COMPARISON OF HOMESCHOOL CONSERVATIVES AND

OTHER CONSERVATIVES CO NS E R VATI V E H O M E SCHOOL PA R E NTS (% )

OTHER CONSERVATIVES ( %)

31*

20

82*

69

16*

31

25 75**

38 57

94**

74

70* 68*

54 55

24* 19* 58**

18 8 41

Strongly agree that public officials do not care what people think Never or only sometimes trust Washington to do what’s right Attended school or community meetings in last six months Recently done community work Member of at least one organization Contributed money to a charity or church Did volunteer work Participated in consumer protest once in a while or more Contacted an elected official Contacted a nonelected official Talked to people about whom to vote for

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01 Source: American National Election Studies (ANES), 2012 and 2016 data.

or charity, compared to three-quarters (74 percent) of other conservatives. In 2012, a large majority (70 percent) recently did volunteer work, compared to a small majority (54 percent) of conservatives; four years later this difference remained. And when it comes to politics, conservative homeschooling families listen to the advice they read in homeschool magazines and speak up. A greater portion of conservative homeschoolers talked to people about whom to vote for (58 percent compared to 41 percent of conservatives), participated in a consumer protest (68 percent compared to 55 percent of conservatives),

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and contacted an elected official to express a view (24 percent compared to 18 percent of conservatives). In 2016, a fifth (19 percent) also contacted a nonelected official, compared to just 8 percent of conservatives overall. These findings illustrate just how different conservative homeschoolers are from others, including other conservatives. That they are more likely to volunteer but less likely to attend a community meeting, more likely to give to a charity but less likely to do community work, more likely to contact a public official but less likely to believe their voice is heard—this all speaks to the peculiar parallel politics of homeschooling. This combination of engagement and disengagement, and participation in private but assertive ways, are part of the success of homeschoolers in defending the policy and joining forces during political campaigns. Though not a causal finding, these descriptive comparisons of individual data on political behavior and attitudes correspond with the theory of parallel politics. Not only are homeschoolers different from other people, but the most conservative homeschoolers are also different from other conservatives in many of the ways the theory predicts, suggesting they are not simply conservatives who opt to homeschool, but something much more distinct and politically meaningful. This is a piece of evidence suggestive of positive individual feedback effects.

C O N S E R VAT I V E P O L I C Y F E E D B A C K SPILLOVER EFFECTS This evidence of the political behavior and attitudes of homeschool parents and earlier evidence on the activities of homeschool organizations resemble the parallel politics of opting out. But do they have spillover effects on others in the community? I examine this question by looking at county homeschooling policy data, though, as we have seen, by design the policy is difficult to study. The libertarian proclivities of homeschool advocates have compelled policy makers to limit data collection by public authorities. In some states, one can barely

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figure out how many homeschoolers there are, let alone where they live. Even with the best data, causality in policy feedback research in general has been frustrated by selection bias. Especially in cross-sectional analysis, we usually cannot conclude that any policy caused any given political outcome when the sorting of people into different policy environments is nonrandom. To solve this endogeneity problem, time-series data address some of these nonrandom differences between units, though they do not eliminate them altogether. Also, when using aggregate data an ecological fallacy may arise, there is the risk of inferring individual differences from nonindividual data. I address this valid concern in two ways, one theoretical and one analytical. Theoretically, the question here is best understood at the aggregate level. I am not interested in whether any individual who homeschools has an influence on an individual neighbor, but rather in whether there are community-wide effects when homeschooling becomes more prevalent. Since my interest is to draw an inference about communities in which homeschooling is thriving, the strong worries about the ecological fallacy should be tempered. There are still other valid concerns about aggregation at the county level, particularly when large counties group people in widely different situations together. It may be the case that in a large county, homeschooling may be active in one part of the county and inactive in another. To address this possibility, I follow the approach of other scholars, such as political scientists Loren Collingwood and Benjamin O’Brien Gonzalez, by comparing the data only for small-population counties.36 It is likely that small counties are more homogenous than large counties, and should thus be less prone to bias and ecological fallacy. This solution provides a robustness check on the concern about ecological fallacy, but it does not eliminate the concern altogether. With these caveats noted, because data from the earliest days of homeschooling are almost nonexistent, the mid-1990s are the starting point for most official counting. From then on, data are collected at the county level and reported by many states through today, though there is likely a good deal of undercounting. Counties are the lowest level of government with consistently, though not always uniformly, reported data.37 For this

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reason, I used a fixed-effects model to control for the unobserved differences between counties and other factors that vary from election to election across time. Using our same eight states, I collected secondary county data on homeschooling enrollment. None of the states have regularly reported homeschooling enrollment since the passage of homeschool policies or laws in the 1980s. The earliest available data come from North Carolina, which has publicly reported since at least 1988. The first presidential election year with data across several states (NC, VA, and WA) is 1996. Because I am interested in the change in voter turnout, I started the analysis with all of the counties in those states with data in both 1996 and 2000, and I added states as they reported homeschool data: PA and AR in the 2004 election; CO in the 2008 election; WI and WV in the 2016 election. Each observation, then, is a county in a presidential election year. After collecting raw homeschool enrollment figures, I calculated the four-year percentage change in homeschool enrollment for each observation, an indicator of whether homeschooling is on the rise or in decline for each county, a way to capture Soss and Schram’s idea of policy salience. In Washington State, the change in homeschooling enrollment from 2012 to 2016 ranged from a low of −21 percent in Pend Orielle County to a high of 72 percent in Challem County. The state’s largest county, King, grew by 6 percent. I converted this variable to a dichotomous variable indicating whether the county had experienced high growth or high salience (greater than the mean of 5 percent change) compared to negative, low, or no growth. Holding all else constant, I expect declining or no change in voter turnout in these counties. Second, I calculated the percentage of homeschoolers out of total school-age children in each county. This is how I captured policy proximity.38 In Arkansas counties in 2016, for example, homeschooling ranged from a high of 12 percent of enrollment in Stone County and 10 percent in Searcy County to a low of less than 1 percent in Phillips County.39 I also converted this information to a dichotomous variable to capture whether homeschool enrollment was relatively large or high proximity (greater than the mean of 3 percent) compared to relatively small. Holding all else constant, I expect these counties to have decreasing or no change in voter turnout.

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Together these two independent variables—percent change in homeschooling enrollment and proportion of homeschoolers out of all schoolage children—approximate policy proximity and policy salience. To control for other factors related to county voter turnout, I matched each county to associated data collected by the U.S. Census and other sources. This approach resulted in two dependent variables: four-year and eight-year change in percentage of presidential election voter turnout. I also included other factors that might influence voting outcomes, especially local geographic, political, economic, and demographic factors that vary across time. I included variables to control for each of those factors that are not constants from election to election.40 The first thing the analysis shows is that the statistical controls included in each model generally adhere to expectations. For example, poor economic conditions—captured by unemployment rate and declining schoolage population—are negatively correlated with increases in voter turnout, and percentage white non-Hispanic is slightly positively correlated with higher increases in turnout. The other controls vary somewhat, but mostly they adhere to expectations about voter turnout. See the technical appendix for more information. To evaluate the expectations about homeschool size raised earlier in the chapter, there is some support for the negative feedback expectation: that increased homeschooling at the local level is related to worse political participation, though the size of the difference is small in all cases. This does not mean that homeschooling families participate at lower levels, but that as homeschooling is on the rise, voter participation, in general, is on the decline or rising more slowly. On the key two homeschooling variables, the statistical evidence shows that high-proximity counties have a four-year turnout percentage change that is 1.67 percentage points lower (and significant) and that high-salience counties have a four-year turnout percentage change that is .91 percentage point lower (and significant) (see the technical appendix for the full statistical model). This means, holding all other variables at their mean value, that the predicted value of the percentage change in four-year voter turnout was less than 1 percentage point (.56) for the high-proximity counties and

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TABLE 7.4 PREDICTED MARGINS OF PERCENTAGE CHANGE IN

FOUR-YEAR AND EIGHT-YEAR VOTER TURNOUT FO U R -Y E A R TU R NO U T ( %)

High-salience counties Low-salience counties High-proximity counties Low-proximity counties

EIG HT-YEAR TURNOUT ( %)

.90 1.82 .56 2.24

2.5 3.96 3.0 3.6

Note: Full statistical models can be found in the technical appendix.

2.24 percentage points for other counties, and also less than 1 percentage point (.90) for high-salience counties and 1.82 percentage points for other counties (table 7.4). Similarly, though high-proximity counties were not different, for the eight-year voter turnout change, high-salience counties were (significantly) lower than low-salience counties. For those high-salience counties, the eight-year predicted change was 2.5 percentage points compared to 3.96 for other counties. These relationships, though the magnitudes are small, suggest that the counties where homeschooling has thrived are the same counties that have small declines in voter participation, all in line with the expectations presented earlier. Several limitations of this analysis are worth noting. First, the changes in turnout demonstrated in the analysis were not linked to party, so there is no way to conclude that Republicans or Democrats are losing or gaining more votes in these homeschool-rich counties. It may be that the well-known voter mobilization volunteering by some homeschoolers increases turnout from some targeted copartisans but not from others. Second, the results are drawn from counties in eight states that have collected and reported homeschool enrollment. Other states, such as Michigan, report almost no homeschooling data. Perhaps there are factors that relate both to the availability of data and the patterns of homeschooling feedback effects, which limit our ability to generalize from these results to all states. Finally, the measures of voter turnout and homeschooling over this time period and across states and localities are not uniform and far from perfect.

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It may be that the effects of interest here could be better observed in other types of elections, such as ballot initiatives, in which public expenditures or taxes may be up for the vote. With all these limitations noted, the significant relationships between county-level homeschooling salience and proximity and voter turnout are another piece of evidence of feedback effect. In this case they show a negative spillover for the community. Even though these are correlational relationships, not causal, because they align with the underlying theory of parallel politics and are consistent with other evidence, they reinforce the core argument that runs through this book.

H O M E S C H O O L I N G A N D T H E T E A PA R T Y If we accept the descriptive evidence that the political attitudes and behaviors of homeschoolers—especially conservative homeschoolers—are different from those of others, and if we accept the evidence that there is a small negative spillover to mass political participation where homeschooling policy has thrived, it is worth considering whether there are other relationships to other political movements. These would be more examples of a feedback effect, since these relationships would further protect homeschooling policy and expand the power of homeschoolers. The story of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann showed this type of individual link between homeschooling and one important conservative movement, the Tea Party. Other Tea Party–affiliated members of Congress, such as Senator Ben Sasse (Nebraska), Congressman Todd Akin (Missouri), Congressman Mark Meadows (North Carolina), and Congressman Alex Mooney (West Virginia), all homeschooled their children. Homeschooling founding father Gary North even dubbed himself the “Tea Party economist” in 2011. Yet if the connections are more widespread than just in interesting cases, they should show up when one further examines the political attitudes of homeschool parents toward the Tea Party, the communications of homeschooling and Tea Party elites, and even connections at the grassroots.

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For example, in 2012 (but not in 2016), the ANES survey included several questions about the Tea Party. Respondents were asked about support for or opposition to the Tea Party, so I could compare homeschool respondents who supported the Tea Party to those who did not. Twice as many homeschool parents supported the Tea Party compared to nonhomeschool parents: one in four (26 percent) homeschool parents compared to one in six (16 percent) nonhomeschool parents. This finding suggests strong support within the homeschool community for the Tea Party, which is not surprising given homeschool ideology and partisanship at the time. Furthermore, earlier in the book, we saw how homeschool organizations tailored communications on certain issue frames compared to charter school organizations. But we did not consider the tone of the language used by the homeschool organizations. That might be an especially important basis to compare the homeschool and Tea Party movements. This is in part because for some scholars, what made the Tea Party remarkable was not its policy agenda or organizational infrastructure but its style and tone of argument.41 As opposed to the typical staid and muted tone of the Republican Party, the Tea Party used a “fervent,” fearful, and angry approach.42 Political scientists describe the “rage” of grassroots members of the Tea Party and find the rhetoric of Tea Party members of Congress in social media communications to be “snarky” and “acidic.”43 Others contend that supporters of the Tea Party were “resentful.”44 Political scientists Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson discovered in fieldwork analyzing the Tea Party that “Christian conservatives set the tone for the Tea Party,” while Tea Party libertarians tended to differ on issues of communications tone.45 In short, tone mattered. Since the homeschool movement predated the Tea Party movement, we might ask, Did homeschool organizations use this same tone that the Tea Party would later adopt? Or were they more traditionally conservative and tempered in their language? To investigate this question, I applied linguistic software to the press releases of the homeschool and charter school organizations.46 The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software applies dictionaries of groups of words proven to be associated with tones and concepts. Based on

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word usage, the software calculates percentage statistics that measure how often an underlying tone shows up in the text. For example, the software tracks words like worried, fearful, hurt, and hate to produce a negative tone score and words like love, nice, and sweet to produce a positive tone score. A score of .5 means that fewer than 1 percent of the words in the text relate the concept. In this case, I mirror the work of political scientists Bryan Gervais and Irwin Morris, who used the software to measure the emotional language of Tea Party members of Congress and tweets from President Trump’s personal Twitter account, particularly the positive and negative tone of social media posts. They found significant differences between ardent supporters of the Tea Party and other Republican members of Congress. The strong Tea Party members of Congress averaged a relatively high .69 negative tone score compared to .61 for non–Tea Party Republican members of Congress overall.47 In examining 4,300 tweets from President Trump they found a negative emotion score of 1.15 (table 7.5). Looking just at the homeschool organization press releases from chapter 5, I found that the tone is usually negative and even more so than the typical tone of the Tea Party Caucus and President Trump. The average negative emotional statistic for the homeschool organizations was 1.74, more than the Tea Party score and significantly more than the charter school organizations’ score, which was 0.51. This means that, on average,

TABLE 7.5 NEGATIVE TONE SCORES FOR DONALD TRUMP, TEA PARTY

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, HOMESCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS, AND CHARTER SCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS

Average negative tone score

@REALDONALDTRUMP

TE A PA RTY M E M BE RS

HOMESCHOOL

CHARTER SCHOOL

T WE E TS *

O F CO NGR E S S *

P RESS RELEASES

P RESS RELEASES

1.15

.69

1.74

.51

* From Bryan Gervais and Irwin Morris, Reactionary Republicanism: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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nearly 2 percent of the homeschool press releases from 2000 to 2016 were made up of negative emotional words. That aggregate homeschool score reflects a .56 score for anger, .30 for sadness, and .20 for anxiety—anger, then, is much more common in these communications than sadness or anxiety. When I compare homeschool press releases to homeschool member emails, it is the externally focused press releases that are significantly more negative—1.78—than the internally focused emails, which scored a .51. As with the other points made in this chapter, the argument here is not that the Tea Party explicitly looked to the homeschool movement for guidance on communications strategy. The connection between the movements is far less direct than that. However, it does show that the movements share yet another characteristic. Not only did many homeschooling parents support the Tea Party, but the tone of the language they used with the media and public at large was similarly harsh—a harbinger of what was to come from the Tea Party and other future political movements animated by negative emotional language, including the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Because of the centrality of tone to the Tea Party, this is an important piece of evidence to consider. To further investigate the connections between homeschooling and the Tea Party, I examined whether local variation in homeschooling corresponded with variation in the Tea Party. The Tea Party was a significant phenomenon in Washington, but it also played out across states, especially in the array of groups that formed and the protests that were held in 2009– 2010.48 In Virginia, for example, Jamie Radtke had homeschooled her kids before founding the Richmond (VA) Tea Party and cofounding the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation. According to the American Majority, Radtke was a symptom of a pattern: “The state of Virginia is home to one of the most organized and unified tea party [sic.] coalitions in the United States. Some of the largest groups are led by home school moms, who are committed to preserving freedom for their children.”49 For Radtke and other homeschoolers, the Tea Party offered a chance to practice the political organizing skills they had learned educating at home, but the Tea Party was not active in every community. Within the eight states I focus on in this book, no county had more than fifteen Tea Party

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organizations, and some had zero. Arapahoe County, Colorado, is a representative case. In Arapahoe, at least four groups formed: Aurora Tea Party, Mile Hi Patriots, 5280 Patriots, and Littleton Tea Party. Already operating in Arapahoe were seven formal and informal homeschool organizations, providing everything from after-school help to parent mentoring. Clark County, Arkansas, was similarly home to the Clark County Tea Party, which believed in “making citizens better informed and holding elected officials accountable to those they represent.”50 The county was also the longtime home of the Clark County Christian Homeschool Organization, which had been operating since at least 2001 to support local homeschool parents and provide funding to HSLDA and Education Alliance, a statewide homeschool advocacy group.51 Arapahoe and Clark Counties were not unusual cases: counties with several homeschool groups were also likely to have a Tea Party organization and Tea Party members.52 One in three counties (29 percent) with more than two homeschool organizations, many operating for years, had at least one Tea Party organization formed in 2009–2010, compared to just one in six counties (17 percent) with fewer than two homeschool organizations (table 7.6; see note to table for statistical significance of percentages). When it came to membership in one particular Tea Party group (the Tea Party

TABLE 7.6 COUNTY-LEVEL HOMESCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE TEA PARTY

Counties with two or more homeschool organizations Counties with fewer than two homeschool organizations

CO U NTI E S W I TH AT

CO UNTIES WITH AT

COUNTIES WITH

L E A S T O NE TE A PA RTY

L E A S T ONE TEA PARTY

AT LEAST ONE TEA

GR O U P (% )

PATRIOT MEMBER ( %)

PARTY RALLY ( %)

29*

67**

16**

17

54

8

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01

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Patriots), two-thirds of counties with several homeschool groups (67 percent) had at least one member who was a resident, compared to just over half (54 percent) of other counties. Tea Party activity was not merely reflected in groups forming and members joining, but also in rallies and protests, famous for the eighteenthcentury dress of attendees and occasionally inflammatory banners. Many of these rallies were held in state capitals, but others were spread out in local communities across each state. A Tea Party activist named April Poley reflected on one such rally for the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in 2011: Two and a half years ago, I attended The Rally for the Republic with 10,000 other freedom-loving Americans . . . there were homeschooling families (like my own) and people of every color and economic status. . . . Six months after attending that rally, myself and others led the first Sheridan tea party. You see, that uniting rally that I just described was organized by Texas Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul, the “godfather” of the tea party movement.53

Using data on Tea Party groups and protests from political scientist Wendy K. Tam Cho and her collaborators, I combined the overall number of Tea Party rallies in each county before and after the 2010 election and then divided counties into those that had at least one rally and those that did not.54 Similar to the positive relationship with Tea Party groups and members, homeschool activity was also associated with rallies. One in six counties (16 percent) with several homeschool organizations had at least one rally during this period, compared to less than one in ten other counties (8 percent).As we know from the previous chapter, homeschool organizations have operated for decades—many long before the conservative Tea Party emerged—have espoused similar values, and have pursued analogous political strategies. The positive relationship between counties with an active homeschooling organizational ecology and counties with subsequent Tea Party activity is another piece of evidence to add to the other evidence in this chapter.55 Taken together, these descriptive and correlational findings

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largely support the evidence from earlier in the book and the central argument of parallel politics.

CONCLUSION At the start of the book, I argued that homeschooling policy must be understood in the context of the larger conservative movement since the 1970s. The leaders of this movement have always been only lukewarm champions of mass democratic participation. In 1980, the homeschooling activist Paul Weyrich said to a convention of religious leaders, “I don’t want everyone to vote. . . . Our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”56 Weyrich was instrumental in the formation of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a sponsor of model legislation to restrain voting through voter identification laws. Forty years later, most homeschool families probably do not know who Paul Weyrich was, and they care more about teaching about the Constitution than winning partisan victories to change the Constitution. The same probably could be said about their awareness of Michele Bachmann and other leaders of the Tea Party. Nonetheless, while most homeschoolers want to be left alone to educate as they see fit, many remain connected to select public services, like libraries, and membership in homeschool organizations makes them aware of changing state education laws and compels them to confront public officials. It is here we would expect to find the distinct political attitudes and behaviors as well as spillover effects associated with homeschooling policy. The varied evidence presented in this chapter supports much of what we expected it would at the start of the chapter. The evidence shows that homeschool parents are often conservative, vote for Republican presidential candidates, and support the Tea Party. Yet they are not simply conservatives who homeschool their children; they appear to be a distinct wing of the conservative movement, exhibiting political attributes akin to parallel

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politics to a greater extent than other ideological conservatives. Homeschool families are especially active, but on their own private terms. And where homeschooling has grown the most, there are differences in voter turnout. These counties show weaker turnout in presidential elections than other counties. When it comes to groups, the evidence suggests more reasons to believe the argument about policy feedback effects. Homeschooling groups communicate in a similar tone as the Tea Party and are most prevalent in areas where the Tea Party has flourished. There are important caveats to these findings. While there is some evidence of a relationship between the relative size and growth of homeschooling and four-year and eight-year changes in voter turnout, this evidence does not support a causal argument. The same can be said for the findings on the Tea Party, which are descriptive and suggestive but not causative. The methods used here suggest that homeschooling policy and participation are likely related, but they are also likely related to other phenomena, some possibly connected to other conservative freedom policies.

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T

the 2016 presidential election was a strange time for supporters of homeschooling and charter schools. Readers of the Washington Post awoke in June to an op-ed by the longtime (though recently departed) leader of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Michael Farris. The headline read, “I helped start the Moral Majority. Trump is the opposite of what we wanted.”1 Farris had concluded that, while he would not support Hillary Clinton, Trump was not his candidate either. Trump lacked the character to be president and was the “antithesis” of everything Farris had fought for over the last four decades, especially on issues of marriage, abortion, and religious freedom. “Now, we’re being asked to give up our character and just vote Republican,” Farris fumed. “That may be the choice of many voters, but it’s not why evangelicals like me got involved in politics.” While homeschool advocates puzzled over the Trump nomination, charter school advocates faced a rapidly shifting Democratic Party. Though they had sat comfortably in the bipartisan center, friendly with the Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas, by 2016 the center was quickly vanishing. While Hillary Clinton had long been a champion of charter schools, and as late as her campaign for president in 2008 was viewed as pro– charter school, 2016 proved to be a turning point. Shortly after the National H E R UN- U P TO

CONCLUSION

Education Association endorsed her candidacy in 2016, she said at a rally in South Carolina that charter schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.”2 The Democratic Party’s agenda, which in 2000 had promised to triple the number of charter schools, was now far more skeptical of their transparency, their accountability, and their guarantees that their growth wouldn’t harm public schools.3 Donald Trump won the election. Though Farris was not a fan, his old organization, HSLDA, had remained active in other races. Nearly a thousand homeschooled campaign volunteers associated with the HSLDAsponsored Generation Joshua Get Out the Vote (GOTV ) initiative took credit for mobilizing more than 650,000 voters—most not associated directly with homeschooling—in four key Senate races in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin. Trump and the Republican Senate candidates won all four.4 And when asked about the outcome of the election, Farris was cautiously optimistic. He trusted the new vice president, Mike Pence, as “an unfailing friend to homeschooling families.” He concluded, “Pray for our leaders. Hope for the best. Watch and be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.” An HSLDA official was even appointed to the Trump transition team. For Democrats, Clinton’s loss meant the party was completely out of power at the national level. When Trump nominated staunch conservatives to his cabinet, Democrats had little recourse. In particular, he appointed Betsy DeVos as secretary of education. Though she had no background in government, DeVos was a prominent financial donor with years of experience supporting conservative policies on school choice, homeschooling, and religious freedom.5 She was a socially conservative Christian whose family had donated $200 million to causes of the New Right since the 1970s, including gifts to the Heritage Foundation and the Council for National Policy.6 HSLDA and Michael Farris may not have been enthusiastic backers of the new president, but they could not have chosen a better ally to head the Department of Education. This final chapter concludes the book by stitching what we’ve learned from the chapters into contemporary politics. How does the election of Donald Trump fit with the theory of conservative policy feedback and

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parallel politics? How does the policy design of homeschooling and charter schooling determine where each policy might go in years to come? And what do these findings mean for democratic participation, accountability, and civic engagement in the decades ahead?

I M P L I C AT I O N S F O R T H E C O N S E R VAT I V E M O V E M E N T A N D C O N S E R VAT I V E F R E E D O M P O L I C I E S The election of Donald Trump was an unexpected and unusual victory for the conservative movement. While many inwardly—and a few outwardly— shared Michael Farris’s consternation, others saw the potential in a political neophyte. Trump made very few specific policy proposals during the campaign, preferring to win with a deeply pessimistic tone and frequent appeals to racism, sexism, and xenophobia. For conservative activists, this meant that much of the work of government and the details of policy appeared unimportant to the new president. But he seemed eager for recommendations. After eight years out of power, Republicans staffed the White House and government with ideological allies who offered the chance for a rebirth of the social conservative agenda on abortion, LGBTQ issues, and immigration. Donald Trump appointed industry insiders and conservative stalwarts across federal agencies, and soon business regulations that had protected the environment, worker rights, and consumer safety were repealed. In so many ways, parallel politics had worked, and Trump administration policy makers frequently used the conservative freedom policy design—rebranded as “conscience rights”—to advance the rights of doctors, nurses, and teachers to refuse to provide services.7 One explanation for this turn of events is that policy feedback has transformed the Republican and conservative electorate, especially evangelicals. Evangelical voters have been allied with the Republican Party since the 1970s, but historically they hewed to a strong belief that there was no difference between private and public morals, between what elected officials did at home and what they did in the office. Evangelicals patrolled the

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Republican nomination process for candidates who espoused conservative views on economic policy but did not adhere to strict social conservative practices on marriage and sex. Many influential evangelical leaders rejected Republican senator Bob Dole’s candidacy for the presidency in 1996 because of his wavering support for staunch anti-abortion policies. Though Dole won a majority of these voters on Election Day, his yield of only two-thirds of the Religious Right and the Christian Coalition hardly made him the consensus choice.8 John McCain faced similar ambivalence from the Religious Right in 2008. By 2016, the nation’s politics had grown even more polarized. Partisan identity had become the central salient marker for many voters. It had even taken on social and personal dimensions. To be a member of a party meant more than simply agreeing with a policy platform—it also suggested whom one could trust, with whom one shared a community, and even whom one should marry. Political scientist Lilliana Mason describes this development as a type of social sorting that more and more has separated Republicans from Democrats psychologically, emotionally, and along lines of race, class, sex, and religion.9 Though the better-sorted Republican Party and allied conservative activists may not have won every policy contest opposing abortion or same-sex marriage since the 1970s, they’d won enough in the years leading up to Trump’s win. New conservative freedom policies, in particular, were an area of success, and these policies matured at the same time that social sorting and polarization accelerated, gradually increasing the number of people directly or indirectly affected by the policies over time. Political scientist Matt Grossmann concludes that these conservative policy victories have been concentrated in education.10 Policy successes coincided with and contributed to later electoral victories, especially in the states, which led to redrawn political maps and advantages in the House and the electoral college. Consequently, the policies that allowed citizens to opt out may have magnified and intensified social sorting and led to even more electoral successes. This is the perpetuating cycle that we call parallel politics. For several decades, homeschooling has permitted families to detach from many of

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the common social institutions that shaped public life for most citizens for much of the twentieth century. At the same time, other conservative freedom policies around gun rights and residential housing have exacerbated this pattern of physical and psychological separation and emboldened interest groups and political movements to push Republicans ever rightward. As Election Day approached in 2016, Donald Trump did not need to adhere to the strict code of character, morals, or language that bound past Republican candidates. His history of support for abortion rights, his multiple marriages, and his limited knowledge of the Christian Bible were not, apparently, held against him. Trump won evangelical voters by a large margin, more than Bush, McCain, or Romney. Evangelical politics have evolved, and the ties among partisanship, religion, and identity are stronger than ever. But these supporters did not win themselves a deeply pious leader of the culture war in the White House. Instead they won an empty vessel, one willing to advance policy goals on everything from abortion to gender to school choice through strategically chosen advisers and deeply sympathetic judicial and executive branch appointments. Donald Trump offered the chance to translate decades of positive policy feedback—and all of the related parallel organizations and institutions—into an administration prepared to redirect the federal government in the directions conservative activists had long dreamed about. Paradoxically, the peculiar politics of the 2016 election resulted in a policy agenda from the Trump White House that was notably conventional. For decades, conservatives had pushed for fewer regulations on businesses, more stringent immigration policies, and reduced taxes. This was the conservative agenda largely supported by the Republican Party. In each case, the Trump administration delivered: cutting regulations protecting the environment and workplace safety, imposing new rules to limit immigration, and passing a large corporate tax cut. On homeschooling, the record was mixed. The policy agenda of most homeschooling advocates has always rejected links to government. These advocates have rejected out of hand nearly any move by government that has not explicitly exempted homeschool parents from new rules and

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regulations. Since the earliest days of homeschooling advocacy in the early 1980s, homeschoolers have eyed any financial support from government with special skepticism, as a risk not worth taking, a first step toward unwelcome regulations and requirements. Nevertheless, shortly after the inauguration, House Republicans Steve King (Iowa) and Andy Harris (Maryland) introduced a bill to create the first federal school voucher plan. School vouchers have long been a priority of conservatives and Republicans, but they were only successful at the state and local levels. HR 610 would change this through a new block grant program administered by the states, and, importantly, it would make homeschools eligible for funding.11 As it had for decades, HSLDA opposed the bill, even though it was sponsored by conservative Republicans. While acknowledging that the bill was “well-intentioned” and introduced by “friends,” HSLDA concluded, “Even though the vouchers created by H.R. 610 would be voluntary, we believe that this would be a slippery slope toward more federal involvement and control in homeschooling.”12 And as it had for generations, HSLDA implored homeschool parents to immediately call the two members of Congress to protest. The bill never moved out of the House Education and Workforce Committee. HSLDA viewed subsequent policy proposals more favorably. Other Republicans aimed to expand the federal educational savings account policy—called “529s,” after the relevant section of the tax code—from just higher education to include K-12 education expenses for public and private schools. Ultimately, it was up to states to adopt these changes, but the design of the policy change would support educational expenses through the tax code, not a voucher from the government. This distinction mattered to HSLDA, because, as it said, “a 529 plan is your own money, not government money.” It backed the initial proposal and pushed for the eligibility of homeschooling expenses.13 By the end of 2017, the K-12 educational savings account provisions of the tax bill had been adopted by the Republican-controlled House but did not include homeschools. Texas senator Ted Cruz moved to amend the bill

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to include expenses for homeschooling, calling opposition to his amendment “discrimination” against homeschoolers, but he was ultimately foiled by Senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden on procedural grounds.14 Homeschool families could use the 529 to save for college, but ultimately not for the costs of homeschooling. For many advocates of homeschooling, the status quo federal policy persisted, and that was perfectly fine. After decades of exemptions and exceptions, the Trump administration and Secretary Betsy DeVos remained hands-off, as homeschool advocates have always demanded. At the state and local levels, however, while public policies remained largely the same, the practice of homeschooling was changing, and quickly. Homeschooling enrollment for decades was primarily white, but the demographics had begun to shift. Though whites were still a majority, the percentage of white homeschooled students dropped from 75 percent to 59 percent from 2009 to 2016. Homeschooling was on the rise fastest among Hispanic students, who went from 9 percent to 26 percent of all homeschoolers over that same period.15 Moreover, in the age of the Internet, the slow drift of homeschooling toward virtual, hybrid, and computer-assisted technology meant that parents were not always the sole providers of instruction and that some students were participating in public school classes or activities at the same time they were learning at home.16 And, finally, advocates for homeschooling became more varied and complicated. HSLDA, which had for several decades been the loudest if not the only voice for homeschoolers, was joined by other national organizations. Several have already been noted in the book, but by 2016 groups like the Coalition for Responsible Home Education and the National Alliance of Secular Homeschoolers had diversified the homeschool interest-group community. HSLDA remained the foremost of these, but the new groups better reflected the increasingly diverse community of homeschoolers. In some ways this change was a return to the earliest days of homeschooling in the 1980s, when homeschoolers of all stripes advocated for the passage of friendlier laws.

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I M P L I C AT I O N S F O R T H O S E O P P O S E D T O T H E C O N S E R VAT I V E M O V E M E N T The years after Trump’s victory were an unexpected revelation for many opposed to the conservative movement. For education policy advocates, in particular, years of consensus policy making on school reform, including bipartisan agreement on many aspects of school choice, the Common Core curriculum, and accountability, cracked wide open.17 Teacher groups were the first to move. After several decades of losses, the period immediately after Trump’s election saw a resurgence of activism, often in the very places Trump seemed most invisible. Though teachers protesting for better working conditions in Los Angeles received much attention, it was the strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona that suggested a new era for education policy and politics. In each state, according to journalist Eric Blanc, teachers walked off the job and demanded more: better pay, better working conditions, and a better education for their students.18 And, despite few of the worker rights protections in other states and the success of Donald Trump in each state, they won. This brings us back to Kanawha County. It was here, the site of the textbook controversy and the birthplace of the New Right in the 1970s, that a group of West Virginia teachers met to mobilize teachers statewide into a successful strike. As Hillary Clinton’s cooling support for charter schools portended, the Democratic Party’s enthusiasm for school choice floundered. The party moved leftward on a variety of issues at the same time many Democratic voters soured on charters, and support dropped eight points from 44 percent to 36 percent between 2013 and 2018.19 Democratic voters also shifted on teacher unions, increasing support nine points from 44 percent to 53 percent over the same time period. The direction of Democratic public opinion, however, showed apparent racial and ethnic differences. Other polling by advocates of charter schools suggested that African American and Hispanic American support for charter schools remained high: a majority of each group had a favorable

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view of charters, while just a quarter of white Democrats held favorable views.20 For a party that had become more evenly balanced across racial and ethnic lines, these divisions raised questions about whether education policy, in general, and charter schools, in particular, would unite them or divide constituents. By the eve of the 2020 election, Democratic candidates for the party’s nomination sounded nothing like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Elizabeth Warren promised to appoint a public school teacher as her secretary of education. Kamala Harris proposed a ten-year $315 billion plan to increase public school teacher pay. And Joe Biden called for a massive increase in spending on low-income schools. As expected, no one addressed homeschooling, but, revealingly, the enthusiasm for testing, accountability, and school choice, so much a part of the party’s past, was largely gone. Across the aisle, these changes in the politics of education policy spelled trouble, according to some political scientists. Writing in the New York Times, political scientist David Hopkins explained how opposition by Republicans to many dimensions of policies favorable to public schools caught up to the party after 2016. Opposing education spending and support for public school teachers in favor of school choice has become “politically dangerous” as the Republican Party tries to maintain support in suburban areas and among college-educated voters.21 Republican governors who cut state education budgets paid a steep price in subsequent elections. Whereas education policy became a largely bipartisan issue and was positioned as an asset to the Republican Party by President George W. Bush, the issue was quickly slipping away from the party and becoming an electoral advantage for Democrats and the education advocates in their party coalition.

*** This book began in North Carolina, in a small community in the rural parts of the state where educating kids is not easy. Jobs are hard to find, and many public institutions have withered under a shrinking base of local taxes and government support. Here it is hard to operate a successful public school, open to all children, regardless of family circumstances.

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Homeschooling did not cause this situation. Neither did charter schooling. In fact, dozens of factors in communities across the United States, many largely out of the control of local or state policy makers, have exacerbated economic, social, and political inequalities. But public policies do matter, and they have consequences for those who participate and those who do not. The aim of this book was to explore how a specific type of policy design, placed into its historical and political context, has built part of the world we live in. Conservative freedom policies emerged at a specific point in time to address a problem viewed by some as so pressing and so inherent to the operations of government that the only solution was to let people opt out, to give them the freedom to pursue a parallel path. For a group of advocates who took this view, there was also a secondary benefit. Freedom to opt out could strengthen convictions, construct new political institutions, and prepare a new generation ready to grab political control. This has largely worked. This book considered only one part of this conservative freedom policy movement: school choice broadly and homeschooling specifically. Nearly by design, homeschooling has flourished since the 1980s, yet it has gone largely unnoticed. For early intellectuals, like R. J. Rushdoony and Gary North, the evidence in this book that, decades after the first homeschool laws were passed, homeschool organizations remain vibrant sources of support for families and conservative causes would surely be a reason to celebrate. As they likely hoped, homeschooling has built a parallel path to education and politics for families dissatisfied with other educational options. Most of these families have probably never read Rushdoony or North, and they share little with the world vision proposed by leading advocacy groups or conservative allies. But policy feedback does not require consensus. All school choice policies need not be aligned. In fact, differences between homeschooling policies and charter school policies seem to generate very different politics. Every homeschool family need not respond to a call to action for a motivated set to swamp a legislator’s office with complaints. All homeschooling organizations need not mobilize volunteers to knock on

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doors during an election for a sufficient number to have effect. And it is not necessary for even a majority of former homeschooled students to later join a Tea Party group or oppose same-sex marriage and abortion for the strong connections to form between these overlapping conservative movements. This was the most revealing finding of the research. The design of conservative freedom policies, like homeschooling, purposefully hides many of the outcomes from researchers and public officials alike. This obfuscation reduces the likelihood of strict public oversight and creates the parallel politics that is critical to the outcome of these policies. Though many misunderstood this fact, large parts of the homeschooling movement never saw retreat from the public square as the central goal. Rather, the point was always to change what happens in the public square.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I

W R OTE T H I S book to understand the world in which our son, Finn, will live. The research started when he was not yet here, continued when he was in diapers, and is now done. He’s still growing and learning, and the book is dedicated to him and his future. Along the way, so many people supported the research and writing, many in the tiniest, but most important ways. The John Jay College, the CUNY Graduate Center, the Advanced Research Collaborative, the Grad Center Civil Society Workshop, and Identity Politics Research all provided institutional support in numerous ways. My lunch crew, Anna Law, Jon Keller, and Boris Heersink, may not always agree on where to eat, but they never disagree on how much they all help me. Kristin Goss, Alex HertelFernandez, Bryan Gervais, Thomas Holyoke, Matt Lacombe, Elizabeth Nisbet, Andrew Sidman, Brian Arbour, Joseph Luders, Chloe Thurston, Jacob Hacker, Yamil Velez, Sanford Schram, Christina Greer, Richard Brown, Muriel Watt, and many others talked about, read, and commented on draft chapters of the book. To actually do the research, scholars, like Brian Ray, Milton Gaither, James Gimpel, Andreas Madestam, shared their data and ideas, and so many leaders of educational organizations shared their time. I can’t thank each by name, but I hope to have honestly reflected their candor and deep

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

concern for education and students in the book. Several research assistants helped collect the data for this project, including Andrew Hidalgo, Jazmin Timur, and Saly Guirguis. Aspects of the analysis of the book appeared earlier in chapter 6 of the tenth edition of Interest Group Politics, and portions of chapter 5 appeared in a journal article published in Administration & Society. My editor, Stephen Wesley, convinced me to write this book based on his promise to go through the publication process with me. He did not waver and made this book better at every stage. Finally, this book would not have been possible without my writing partner, coparent, best friend, and wife, Kate Storey.

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TECHNICAL APPENDIX Data and Methodology

S E L E C T I O N O F E I G H T S TAT E S To make the project feasible and to make comparisons possible, I chose states to reflect a variety of state homeschool policy environments. I sought to avoid states that were highly regulated or that had low regulation, and I also had to choose states that collected and shared data on homeschool enrollment. I also sought regional variation. As a consequence, I purposefully chose four states with relatively high regulation (PA, CO, VA, and WA) and four states with relatively low regulation (AR, NC, WI, and WV). These states also nonrandomly represent the South, West, Northeast, and Midwest. The resulting sample of eight states determined where I sought interviews and collected enrollment data.

INTERVIEW PROTOCOL The qualitative portions of the book, especially chapters 4 and 5, reflect interviews conducted with the leaders of homeschool organizations at the national, state, and local levels. The interview protocol and questions were

T E C H N I C A L A P P E N D I X : DATA A N D M E T H O D O LO GY

reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of John Jay College, City University of New York (IRB File #2018-0249). I used a nonrandom snowball sampling method to identify potential interviewees based on an original Internet search of organizations. I explained the purpose of the project to each interviewee and assured the confidentiality of individuals and organizations. Some individuals waived confidentiality and were willing to have their names and organizational names used in the book. In all other cases, organizational and individual information has been protected. During the interviews, I asked a series of open-ended questions and used pull-quotes throughout the book to illustrate key themes and points.

O P I N I O N DATA In chapter 7, I use publicly available public opinion data from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies. I employ the standard weighting methods based on the instructions provided by each study. Because so few homeschool families were surveyed in each, the analyses are limited to descriptive and bivariate statistics.

C O N T E N T A N A LY S I S DATA To conduct the content analysis in chapter 5, I hired several graduate students to search publicly available websites of national homeschool and charter school organizations for press releases. Each group used several tools to communicate with the public and its members, including newsletters, magazines, and press releases. Since at least 2010, each organization has used social media, and each has maintained a public website for even longer. I collected certain communications documents going back as far as the 1990s. We collected all of the press releases and emails available. Since the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) published member

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action alerts that it shared via email, we also collected those. While each organization limits access to some documents, press releases are regularly archived and made available to the public. Press releases provide information that social scientists use to analyze interest-group strategy and tactics. They also capture the messages, frames, and issues an organization is eager for journalists to use in reporting on a policy. Though press releases do not capture all the internal ways an organization may discuss issues, communication to the public through the media is a central tactic of outside lobbying and a window through which we can see potential interpretive policy feedback effects. We cannot guarantee that all the press releases and emails that each organization distributed were archived online. Nevertheless, if there were omissions, they were likely random and not prone to a systemic bias that would alter the final analysis. Once collected, the full text of each press release (and email) was automatically coded with a keyword (and text strings) dictionary to capture each concept (see table A.1). If at least one of the keywords from each concept from the dictionary appeared in a press release or email, it was coded as “1” and “0” otherwise. I then analyzed each concept based on the presence of those keywords in Stata. TABLE A.1 CODED TERMS IN PRESS RELEASES AND EMAILS FROM

HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS B ROAD C ON C EP T

S PE CI FI C W O R DS U S E D TO CA PTU RE CONCEP T

rights freedom choice equity security race/ethnicity

right*, obliga*, conscience, entitlem* freedom*, liber* choice*, option* *equit*, *equal*, justice*, *fair*, discrim* attack*, threat*, harass*, intimidate*, persecute* race*, racial*, ethni*, gender*, African american*, african-american*, latino*, hispanic*, asian*, native american, native-american*, ESL*, English as a second language, non-white*, non white* *market*, *competit*, innova*, *effici*, *capitalis*

market

Note: Asterisks indicate stems of related words or phrases. Additional codes used for educational issues and subdimensions available upon request.

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I also collected publicly available member emails from HSLDA to compare outward-facing press releases to inward-facing emails (emails were not available for the other three organizations: the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools). These messages are especially important in helping us understand what HSLDA expressed to members who seem to take the information seriously.

H O M E S C H O O L E N R O L L M E N T DATA As noted throughout the book and in chapter 7 in particular, homeschooling enrollment data are not tracked in a consistent fashion across states or even in a given state across time, though in each state I was able to determine county-level estimates of homeschooling enrollment. States in the study also did not begin sharing homeschooling data at the same time; North Carolina has the oldest archive, and the definition of homeschooling differs across states. For this reason the data are typically analyzed in terms of percentage or percentage change and are often relative to other county data. Because of some missing data issues, I imputed missing data for gaps in a sequence of annual enrollment data through a basic method of imputation with existing data. I acknowledge the data limitations throughout the book and draw conclusions from the findings with these caveats in mind.

VO T E R T U R N O U T DATA Election data are also prone to variation across states and are not uniformly shared across time. To the greatest extent possible for chapter 7, I collected county-level counts of the voter-eligible population and counts of voter turnout in presidential-year elections. I then compared four- and eight-year

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TABLE A.2 FULL STATISTICAL MODEL OF VOTER TURNOUT

SUPPORTING TABLE 7.4 CH A NGE I N FO U R Y E A R

CHANG E IN EIG HT YEAR

TU R NO U T (O DDS R ATI O S

TURNOUT ( OD D S RATIOS

W I TH S TA NDA R D E R R O R S

WITH STAND ARD ERRORS

I N PA R E NTH E S E S )

IN PARENTHESES)

High Salience High Proximity Percent Republican Change in Public School Enrollment Unemployment Rate Percent Change in Hispanic Residents Competitive Election Percent White, nonHispanic Residents Constant N R2 within

−.91* (.53) −1.67** (.83) −.08*** (.02) 5.67

−1.51* (.89) −.56 (1.51) −.26*** (.03) −6.76

(6.93) −.92*** (.13) 18.79***

(15.14) .07 (.21) 20.17

(7.27) .24 (.88) .07***

(14.99) −.21 (1.63) .21***

(.01) 6.88*** (1.84) 957 .05

(.02) 1.09 (3.11) 707 .05

*p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01

percentage changes in presidential-year voter turnout (table A.2). Because not all states share these data as far back as others, some states enter into the analysis at later points than others for which better historical data could be found.

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T E A PA R T Y DATA I rely extensively on the generosity of other scholars for Tea Party data. I use previously collected county-level data on Tea Party protests and membership in chapter 7, including data from political scientists Tam Cho and colleagues and McVeigh and colleagues.1

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INTRODUCTION 1. Angeli Wright and Maddy Jones, “Special Report: Mountain Elementary School,” Citizen Times, June 25, 2016, http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/2016/06/25/special -report-closing-mountain-elementary-school/86249060/. 2. Based on available data collected by the state, 619 students were homeschooled in the county in 2005; by 2015 that figure had grown to 956. 3. Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2017). 4. Haywood County, “Library Grant,” n.d., http://www.haywoodnc.net/index.php?option=com _content&view=article&id=1141%3Anews-library-grant&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid =194. 5. Jeffrey Henig, Spin Cycle: How Research Gets Used in Policy Debates—The Case of Charter Schools (New York: Sage Foundation, 2008). 6. Christopher Lubienski, Tiffany Puckett, and T. Jameson Brewer, “Does Homeschooling ‘Work’? A Critique of the Empirical Claims and Agenda of Advocacy Organizations,” Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 378–92. 7. Brian Ray, “Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It,” Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 324–41. 8. Joseph Murphy, Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2012). 9. “Public Charter School Enrollment,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp; Amber Noel, Patrick Stark, and Jeremy Redford, “Parent and Family Involvement in Education, from the National Household Education Surveys Program of 2012,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2016, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013028rev.pdf.

INTRODUCTION

10. “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, table 216.20, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_216.20.asp?current=yes. 11. Based on interview by email on October 5, 2018. 12. Jeremy Redford, Danielle Battle, and Stacey Bielick, “Homeschooling in the United States: 2012,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016 /2016096rev.pdf; Jaweed Kallem, “Homeschooling Without God,” Atlantic, March 30, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/homeschooling-without-god /475953/; charter statistics from 2016: “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, table 206.30, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18 _206.30.asp. 13. Sarah Grady, Stacey Bielick, and Susan Aud, “Trends in the Use of School Choice: 1993 to 2007,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2010, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010 /2010004.pdf. 14. Redford, Battle, and Bielick, “Homeschooling in the United States: 2012.” 15. Grady, Bielick, and Aud, “Trends in the Use of School Choice.” 16. Based on confidential interview January 29, 2019. 17. Meghan McQuiggan and Mahi Megra, “Parent and Family Involvement in Education: Results from the National Household Education Surveys Program of 2016,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, table 8, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017102.pdf. 18. Paul Teske and Mark Schneider, “What Research Can Tell Policymakers About School Choice,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20, no. 4 (2001): 609–31. 19. Heidi Holmes Erickson, “How Do Parents Choose Schools, and What Schools Do They Choose? A Literature Review of Private School Choice Programs in the United States,” Journal of School Choice 11, no. 4 (2017): 491–506. 20. Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen, What Schools Do Families Want (and Why)? School Demand and Information Before and After the New Orleans Post-Katrina School Reforms (New Orleans, LA: Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, Tulane University, 2015). 21. Marie Hojnacki et al., “Assessing Business Advantage in Washington Lobbying,” Interest Groups and Advocacy 4, no. 3 (2015): 205–24. 22. Frank Baumgartner et al., Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 23. Jessica Huseman, “Small Group Goes to Great Lengths to Block Homeschooling Regulation,” ProPublica, August 27, 2015, https://www.propublica.org/article/small-group -goes-great-lengths-to-block-homeschooling-regulation. 24. Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 25. Catherine Lugg and Malila N. Robinson, “Religion, Advocacy Coalitions, and the Politics of U.S. Public Schooling,” Educational Policy 23, no. 1 ( January 2009): 242–66. 26. Bruce S. Cooper and John Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling: New Developments, New Challenges,” Educational Policy 21, no. 1 ( January 2007): 110–31.

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27. Quoted in Walter Olson, “Reasonable Doubts: Invitation to a Stoning: Getting Cozy with Theocrats,” Reason, November 1998, https://reason.com/1998/11/01/invitation-to-a -stoning/. 28. Quoted in Thomas Edsall, Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (Philadelphia: Basic, 2007), 97. 29. Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom. 30. Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 31. E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York: Henry Holt, 1960). 32. Erik Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 33. Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties. 34. Cooper and Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling.” 35. Mitchel Stevens, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 36. Robert Kunzman, Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling (Boston: Beacon, 2009). 37. Edsall, Building Red America. 38. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 39. In a retelling of the 2012 primary campaign, Huckabee advisers credited their surprise Iowa caucus win to what they called a “ ‘volunteer army’ of homeschoolers, farmers, preachers, and college students.” Scott Lamb, Huckabee: The Authorized Biography (Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 2015), 268. 40. Grover Norquist, “These Six New Voting Blocs Won’t Want Hillary Clinton in the White House,” Washington Post, April 7, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these -new-voting-blocs-wont-want-hillary-clinton-in-the-white-house/2016/04/07/fc09d6d4 -f5d5-11e5-8b23-538270a1ca31_story.html. 41. Christian Smith and David Sikkink, “Is Private Schooling Privatizing?” First Things, No. 92, April 1999, http:// www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ ft9904/articles/smith.html. 42. Lubienski, Puckett, and Brewer, “Does Homeschooling ‘Work’?” 43. Heath Brown, Tea Party Divided: The Hidden Diversity of an Evolving Movement (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2015). 44. Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump at the 2017 Values Voter Summit,” White House, October 13, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump -2017-values-voter-summit/. 45. Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 46. Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Amy Lerman,

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47.

48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (and What We Can Do to Fix It) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). Edward J. Blakely and Thomas Sanchez, “Walling In or Walling Out: Gated Communities,” in The Black Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, Politics, and Place, ed. Robert D. Bullard (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). Joshua Rothman, “Rod Dreher’s Monastic Vision,” New Yorker, April 24, 2017, https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/rod-drehers-monastic-vision. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States—and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Steven Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Paul Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change,” World Politics 45, no. 4 (1993): 595–628. Rachel Coleman, “A Brief History of Homeschooling,” Center for Responsible Home Education, accessed July 22, 2020, https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/summaries /a-brief-history-of-homeschooling/. Rob Reich, “The Civic Perils of Homeschooling,” Educational Leadership 59, no. 7 (2002): 56–59. Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right,” Christianity and Civilization 1 (Spring 1982), 38. Robert Putnam and David Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012). Joe Soss and Sanford Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 111–27. Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom.

1. A THEORY OF CONSERVATIVE FREEDOM POLICY FEEDBACK 1. Based on confidential interview on July 10, 2018. 2. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (New York: New Press, 2020). 3. Suzanne Mettler and Mallory SoRelle, “Policy Feedback Theory,” in Theories of the Policy Process, ed. Paul Sabatier and Christopher Wieble (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2014), 151–82. 4. Sam Rosenfeld, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 5. Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

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6. Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, “The Polarization of American Politics,” Journal of Politics 46, no. 4 (1984): 1061–79. 7. Joseph Crespino, “Civil Rights and the Religious Right,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 90–105. 8. Clyde Wilcox, Mark Rozell, and Roland Gunn, “Religious Coalitions in the New Christian Right,” Social Science Quarterly 77 (1996): 543–59. 9. Matt Grossmann and David Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 10. Jeffrey Tulis and Nicole Mellow, Legacies of Losing in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Richard Vigeurie and David Franke, America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power (Chicago: Bonus, 2004). 11. Vigeurie and Franke, America’s Right Turn. 12. Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 13. Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 14. Gwendoline Alphonso, “Resurgent Parenthood: Organic Domestic Ideals and the Southern Family Roots of Conservative Ascendancy, 1980–2005,” Polity 48, no. 2 (2016): 205–23. 15. Andrew Lewis, The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 16. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Republican Party Platform of 1960,” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25839. 17. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Republican Party Platform of 1980,” The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25844. 18. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Republican Party Platforms: 2000 Republican Party Platform Online,” The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu /node/273446. 19. Ronald Reagan, “Ronald Reagan, 1988–89,” The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus/4732407.1988.001?view=toc. 20. James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy State (New York: Free Press, 1991). 21. Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Steven Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States—and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 22. Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 23. Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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24. Jennifer L. Erkulwater, “How the Nation’s Largest Minority Became White: Race Politics and the Disability Rights Movement, 1970–1980,” Journal of Policy History 30, no. 3 (2018): 367–99. 25. Eric Patashnik, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 26. Alvin Rabushka, “Tax and Spending Limits,” in The United States in the 1980s, ed. Peter Duignan and Alvin Rabushka (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1980), 105. 27. Ursula Hackett and Desmond King, “The Reinvention of Vouchers for a Color-Blind Era: A Racial Orders Account,” Studies in American Political Development 33, no. 2 (2019): 234–57. 28. Charles Orlebeke, “The Evolution of Low‐Income Housing Policy, 1949 to 1999,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 489–520; Chloe Thurston, At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 29. Will Fischer, “Research Shows Housing Vouchers Reduce Hardship and Provide Platform for Long-Term Gains Among Children,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 7, 2015, https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/research-shows-housing-vouchers-reduce -hardship-and-provide-platform-for-long-term. 30. Daniel Béland, Philip Rocco, and Alex Waddan, “Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act,” Policy Studies Journal 47 (2019): 395–422. 31. Philip Rocco and Simon F. Haeder, “How Intense Policy Demanders Shape Postreform Politics: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 43 no. 2 (2018): 271–304. 32. “About ALEC’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,” American Legislative Exchange Council, http://alec.devhm.net/initiatives/health-care-freedom-initiative/about-alecs-freedom -of-choice-in-health-care-act/. 33. Ben Merriman, Conservative Innovators: How States Are Challenging Federal Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 34. Lewis, The Rights Turn. 35. Christopher Baylor, First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformation (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2017). 36. Daniel Bennett, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017). 37. Lewis, The Rights Turn. 38. Robert Pear and Jeremy Peters, “Trump Gives Health Workers New Religious Liberty Protections,” New York Times, January 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us /health-care-office-abortion-contraception.html. 39. “States with Religious and Philosophical Exemptions from School Immunization Requirements,” National Conference of State Legislatures, January 3, 2020, http://www .ncsl.org/research/health/school-immunization-exemption-state-laws.aspx. 40. Kimberly Morgan And Andrea Louise Campbell, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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41. Demetra Smith Nightingale and Nancy M. Pindus, “Privatization of Public Social Services,” Urban Institute, October 15, 1997, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files /publication/67086/407023-Privatization-of-Public-Social-Services.pdf. 42. Ursula Hackett, “Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States,” Policy Studies Journal 45, no 3 (2017): 464–89. 43. Others have used the imagery of “parallelism” in a similar fashion, including Paul Pierson, Jason Bivins, and Michael Apple. See Paul Pierson, Politics In Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jason Bivens, The Fracture of Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge to American Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Michael Apple “Away with all Teachers: the Cultural Politics of Home Schooling,” in Home Schooling in Full View, ed. B. S. Cooper (Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2005), 75–95. 44. Renaud Le Goix, “Gated Communities: Sprawl and Social Segregation in Southern California,” Housing Studies 20, no. 2 (2005): 323–43; Edward Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). 45. Jill Grant, “The Function of the Gates: The Social Construction of Security in Gated Developments,” Town Planning Review 76, no. 3 (2005): 291–313. 46. Larry J. Smith et al., “Gated Communities: Private Solution or Public Dilemma?” Urban Lawyer 29, no. 3 (1997): 413–26; Ron Carlee, “Homeowners Associations: One More Idiosyncrasy in U.S. Local Governance,” Public Administration Review 71, no. 4 (2011): 550–52; Barbara Coyle McCabe, “Homeowners Associations as Private Governments: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and Why It Matters,” Public Administration Review 71, no. 4 (2011): 535–42. 47. Jill Tao and Barbara McCabe, “Where a Hollow State Casts No Shadow: Homeowner Associations in Local Governments,” American Review of Public Administration 42 (2012): 678–94, 10.1177/0275074012452337. 48. Carlee, “Homeowners Associations,” 551. 49. Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 170. 50. Kathleen Thelen, “How Institutions Evolve: Insights from Comparative-Historical Analysis,” in Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 208–40. 51. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 137. 52. Daniel Béland, “Ideas and Institutional Change in Social Security: Conversion, Layering, and Policy Drift,” Social Science Quarterly 88 (2007): 20–38, 32. 53. Kristin Goss, Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 54. Jennifer Carlson, “Mourning Mayberry: Guns, Masculinity and Socioeconomic Decline,” Gender & Society 29, no. 3 (2015), 386–409. 55. Matthew Lacombe, “The Political Weaponization of Gun Owners: The NRA’s Cultivation, Dissemination, and Use of a Group Social Identity,” Journal of Politics, 81, no. 4 (2019): 1342–56.

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56. Mark Joslyn, Donald Haider‐Markel, Michael Baggs, and Andrew Bilbo, “Emerging Political Identities? Gun Ownership and Voting in Presidential Elections,” Social Science Quarterly, 98 (2017), 394. 57. Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1993). 58. M. Christine Cagle and J. Michael Martinez, “Have Gun, Will Travel: The Dispute Between the CDC and the NRA on Firearm Violence as a Public Health Problem,” Politics and Policy, 32 (2008): 278–310. 59. Douglas Jaenicke and Alex Waddan, “President Bush and Social Policy: The Strange Case of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit,” Political Science Quarterly 121, no. 2 (2006): 217–40. 60. Andrea Louise Campbell and Kimberly J. Morgan, “Financing the Welfare State: Elite Politics and the Decline of the Social Insurance Model in America,” Studies in American Political Development 19, no. 2 (2005): 173–95. 61. Jamila Michener, “Policy Feedback in a Racialized Polity,” Policy Studies Journal 47 (2019): 423–50. 62. See “School Voucher Laws: State-by-State Comparison,” National Conference of State Legislatures, August 28, 2014, http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/voucher-law -comparison.aspx. 63. Alexander Von Hoffman, “Calling upon the Genius of Private Enterprise: The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and the Liberal Turn to Public-Private Partnerships,” Studies in American Political Development 27, no. 2 (2013): 165–94. 64. Mark R. Joslyn and Steven M. Sylvester, “The Determinants and Consequences of Accurate Beliefs About Childhood Vaccinations,” American Politics Research 47, no. 3 (2019): 628–49; Samantha Vanderslott, “Exploring the Meaning of Pro-vaccine Activism Across Two Countries,” Social Science & Medicine 222 (February 2019): 59–69. 65. Alan M. Jacobs and Kent R. Weaver, “Self‐Undermining Feedback,” Governance 28 (2015): 441–57. 66. Ellen Marks, “Governor Reduces Need for Occupational Licenses,” Albuquerque Journal, October 3, 2018, https://www.abqjournal.com/1228841/governors-order-no-license-needed -for-many-occupations.html. 67. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “After the ‘Master Theory’: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (2014): 643–62. 68. Elmer E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (Boston: Wadsworth, 2013); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). 69. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, 58. 70. Kent Weaver, “Paths and Forks or Chutes and Ladders? Negative Feedbacks and Policy Regime Change,” Journal of Public Policy 30, no. 2 (2010): 137–62. 71. Douglas North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

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72. Paul Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change,” World Politics 45, no. 4 (1993): 595–628. 73. Joe Soss, “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action,” American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (1999): 363–80. 74. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 111–27. 75. Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Daniel McCool, “Subgovernments as Determinants of Political Viability,” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 2 (1990): 269–93. 76. Soss and Schram, “A Public Transformed?” 77. David Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, “Problem Definition, Agenda Access, and Policy Choice,” Policy Studies Journal 21, no. 1 (1993): 56–77. 78. Andrea L. Campbell, “Policy Feedbacks and the Impact of Policy Designs on Public Opinion,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 36, no. 6 (2011): 961–73. 79. Jamila Michener, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Soss and Schram, “A Public Transformed?” 25; Delphia Shanks‐Booth and Suzanne Mettler, “The Paradox of the Earned Income Tax Credit: Appreciating Benefits but Not Their Source,” Policy Studies Journal 47 (2019): 300–23. 80. Hacker and Pierson, “After the ‘Master Theory.’ ” 81. Amy Lerman and Vesla Weaver, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOMESCHOOL POLICY 1. See the excellent documentary on the protests that began in Kanawha County produced by American RadioWorks, http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/textbooks /index.html, as well as detailed histories by scholars such as Carol Mason, Reading Appalachia from Left to Right: Conservatives and the 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 2. Mason, Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, 6. 3. Quoted in Mason, Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, 100. 4. Christian fundamentalists and Christian evangelicals are related in their close, and often strict, reading of the Bible as well as the multiple associated Protestant denominations. Evangelicalism serves as a broader, umbrella term that typically encompasses fundamentalists’ stricter adherence to the Bible, and thus evangelical will be used throughout the book for the sake of simplicity, unless the reference calls for a distinction. 5. Inquiry Report: Kanawha County, West Virginia: A Textbook Study in Cultural Conflict (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1975), 13, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext /ED106165.pdf.

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6. James Wooten, “Bomb Indictments Latest Battle in Textbook War,” New York Times, January 27, 1975, https://www.nytimes.com/1975/01/27/archives/bomb-indictments-latest -battle-in-textbook-war.html. 7. Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014). 8. Russ Belliant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1991), 3. 9. Jason Stahl, Right Moves: The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 10. Sidney Milkis and Daniel Tichenor, Rivalry and Reform: Presidents, Social Movements, and the Transformation of American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 11. Quoted in William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 2010), 175. 12. Stahl, Right Moves, 77. 13. Quoted in Inquiry Report, 46. 14. Lester Faigley, “What Happened in Kanawha County?” English Journal 64, no. 5 (May 1975): 7–9. 15. Wooten, “Bomb Indictments.” 16. James Wooten, “Disputed Books to Return To West Virginia Schools,” New York Times, November 9, 1974, https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/09/archives/disputed-books-to-return -to-west-virginia-schoolss-parental.html. 17. Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave, 2008). 18. Associated Press, “Drive to Ban Textbooks Succeeds,” New York Times, December 3, 1978, https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/03/archives/drive-to-ban-textbooks-succeeds-protest -was-kept-in-mind.html. 19. West Virginia Code: http://www.wvlegislature.gov/WVCODE/Code.cfm?chap=18&art=8. 20. West Virginia Home Educators Association, “History to 1990,” https://wvhea.org/about /history/. 21. Gaither, Homeschool. 22. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Board of Education, Twelfth Annual Report of the Board of Education, Together with the Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board (1848) (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1849). 23. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Twelfth Annual Report, 138. 24. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Twelfth Annual Report, 138. 25. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Twelfth Annual Report, 140. 26. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Twelfth Annual Report, 89. 27. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Twelfth Annual Report, 89. 28. David Tyack and Robert Lowe, “The Constitutional Moment: Reconstruction and Black Education in the South,” American Journal of Education 94, no. 2 (1986): 236–56. 29. “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2016, table 234.10, ttps://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_234.10.asp.

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30. “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2016, table 105.30, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_105.30.asp. 31. Figures reported in constant 2015–2016 dollars. “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, 2016, table 236.10, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest /d16/tables/dt16_236.10.asp. 32. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Special Message to the Congress Transmitting Reorganization Plan of 1953 Creating the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,” in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, March 12, 1953, http://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9794. 33. Heath Brown, Lobbying the New President: Interests in Transition (New York: Routledge, 2012). 34. Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, “Education and Title VI,” https:// www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq43e4.html. 35. “Steven I. Engel et al., Petitioners, v. William J. Vitale, Jr., et al.,” Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/370/421. 36. Kevin Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 109. 37. “News Conference 37, June 27, 1962,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/Press-Conferences /News-Conference-37.aspx. 38. Green v. Kennedy, https://www.leagle.com/decision/19701436309fsupp112711217.xml 39. “Green v. Kennedy, 309 F. Supp. 1127 (D.D.C. 1970),” Justia, https://law.justia.com/cases /federal/district-courts/FSupp/309/1127/2096127/. 40. Randall Balmer, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Politico Magazine, May 27, 2014, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133# .U4cuc15MkmY. 41. Richard Hughes, Christian America and the Kingdom of God (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 155. 42. Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 43. Domingo Morel, Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 44. Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert Solo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 123–44. 45. “State of Wisconsin, Petitioner, v. Jonas Yoder et al.,” Legal Information Institute, https:// www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/406/205. 46. “State of Wisconsin, Petitioner, v. Jonas Yoder et al.” 47. There are many other characters who mattered, but they will not be described in detail. 48. John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976), 8. 49. John Holt, Growing Without Schooling 1 (1977): 4, https://issuu.com/patfarenga/docs/gws-1.

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50. John Holt, Growing Without Schooling 4 (1977): 8, https://issuu.com/patfarenga/docs /gws-4. 51. Holt, Growing Without Schooling 4 (1977): 8. 52. Holt, Growing Without Schooling 1 (1977): 1. 53. Holt, Growing Without Schooling 1 (1977): 1. 54. Gaither, Homeschool. 55. Michael McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 56. Rousas John Rushdoony, “The Restoration of Education,” Chalcedon, December 1, 1997, https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-restoration-of-education. 57. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Valliceto, CA: Rose House Books, 1963), 100. 58. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction. 59. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction. 60. Daniel Bennett, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017). 61. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction, 3. 62. Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2. 63. Frederick Stecker, The Podium, the Pulpit, and the Republicans: How Presidential Candidates Use Religious Language in American Political Debate (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011). 64. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction, 146. 65. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction, 169. 66. Rousas John Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1991). 67. Rousas John Rushdoony, “The Restoration of Education,” The Chalcedon Report December 1997, n.p., https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-restoration-of-education. 68. Clyde Wilcox and Carin Robinson, Onward Christian Soldiers: The Religious Right and American Politics (New York: Avalon, 2010). 69. Kruse, One Nation Under God. 70. Milkis and Tichenor, Rivalry and Reform. 71. Catherine Lugg, “The Christian Right: A Cultivated Collection of Interest Groups,” Educational Policy 15, no. 1 (2001): 41–57, 51. 72. Wilcox and Robinson, Onward Christian Soldiers, 56. 73. Richard Viguerie and David Franke, America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power (Los Angeles: Bonus Books, 2004). 74. Lou Cannon, “Tapping the Little Guy,” Washington Post, March 6, 1977, https://www .washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/03/06/tapping-the-little-guy/8d4c0966 -2096-4df0-a8cb-e6e77caff439/. 75. Mitchell Stevens, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 76. Mark Oppenheimer, “ ‘Christian Economics’ Meets the Antiunion Movement,” New York Times, April 29, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30beliefs.html.

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77. McVicar, Christian Reconstruction, 184. 78. Gary North, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory, 4th ed. (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), 380. 79. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), 601. 80. North, Political Polytheism, 21. 81. Kevin Craig, “Education and Political Action,” Biblical Educator, October 1980, 1. 82. Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right,” in Symposium on the Failure of the American Baptist Culture, ed. James Jordan (Tyler, TX: Geneva Divinity School, 1982), 1–40, 25. 83. Christopher Klicka, Home School Heroes: The Struggle and Triumph of Home Schooling in America (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2006), 20. 84. Walter Olson, “Reasonable Doubts: Invitation to a Stoning,” Reason, November 1998, https://reason.com/archives/1998/11/01/invitation-to-a-stoning. 85. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). 86. Ralph Reed, “Casting a Wider Net: Religious Conservatives Move Beyond Abortion and Homosexuality,” National Review 65 (1993): 31–35, 31. 87. Melissa Deckman, School Board Battles: The Christian Right in Local Politics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004). 88. Richard Murnane and Sean Reardon, “Long-Term Trends in Private School Enrollments by Family Income,” AERA Open 4, no. 1 (2018). 89. Wilcox and Robinson, Onward Christian Soldiers, 52. 90. Paul Weyrich, “Letter to Conservatives,” National Center for Public Policy Research, February 16, 1999, https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/1999/02/16/letter-to-conservatives-by -paul-m-weyrich/. 91. John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990). 92. Jon Shelton, “ ‘Compulsory Unionism’ and Its Critics: The National Right to Work Committee, Teacher Unions, and the Defeat of Labor Law Reform in 1978,” Journal of Policy History 29, no. 3 (2017): 378–402. 93. Chubb and Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools. 94. Jesse Rhodes, An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013). 95. Albert Shanker, “National Press Club Speech,” March 31, 1988, 11–12, https://reuther .wayne.edu/files/64.43.pdf. 96. Shanker, “National Press Club Speech,” 27. 97. Ted Kolderie, “Ray Budde and the Origins of the ‘Charter Concept,’ ” Education Evolving, June 2005, https://www.educationevolving.org/pdf/Ray-Budde-Origins-Of-Chartering.pdf. 98. Rachel Cohen, “The Untold History of Charter Schools,” Democracy Journal, April 27, 2017. 99. Ray Budde, Education by Charter: Restructuring School Districts (Andover, MA: The Regional Laboratory for Educational Improvement of the Northeast & Islands, 1988), 123.

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100. Cohen, “Untold History,”; Ted Kolderie, “Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive Franchise in Public Education,” Policy Report No. 8, Progressive Policy Institute, November 1990. 101. Elizabeth DeBray-Pelot, Christopher A. Lubienski, and Janelle T. Scott, “The Institutional Landscape of Interest Group Politics and School Choice,” Peabody Journal of Education 82, nos. 2–3 (2007): 204–30. 102. DeBray-Pelot, Lubienski, and Scott, “The Institutional Landscape,” 212. 103. Ted Kolderie, The States Will Have to Withdraw the Exclusive (St. Paul, MN: Center for Policy Studies, 1990). 104. Kolderie, The States. 105. Wayne Lewis, “The Politics of Charter Schools and Choice in North Carolina,” in The Politics of Parent Choice in Public Education: The Choice Movement in North Carolina and the United States, ed. Wayne Lewis (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 91–122. 106. Rhodes, An Education in Politics, 81. 107. William J. Clinton, “Statement on Signing the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998,” in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www .presidency.ucsb.edu/node/225131.

3. DESIGN OF HOMESCHOOL AND CHARTER SCHOOL POLICY 1. Julian Betts et al., “What Happens When Schools Become Magnet Schools? A Longitudinal Study of Diversity and Achievement,” American Institutes for Research, May 2015, https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/downloads/report/Magnet-Schools-Diversity -and-Achievement-May-2015-rev.pdf. 2. Laren Morando Rhim et al., “Balancing Disparate Visions: An Analysis of Special Education in Charter Schools,” in Taking Account of Charter Schools: What’s Happened and What’s Next? ed. Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004). 3. Jeffrey Max et al., “How Does School Choice Affect Student Achievement in Traditional Public Schools?” Issue brief, Mathematica, November 20, 2019. 4. Ursula Hackett, “Attenuated Governance: How Policymakers Insulate Private School Choice from Legal Challenge,” Policy Studies Journal 47, no. 2 (May 2019): 237–73. 5. Donna M. Johnson, “Confrontation and Cooperation: The Complicated Relationship Between Homeschoolers and Public Schools,” Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 298–308. 6. Kevin Williamson, “The Last Radicals,” National Review, September 27, 2012, https:// www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/328699/last-radicals. 7. Joseph Murphy, Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2012). 8. David Fleming, William Mitchell, and Michael McNally, “Can Markets Make Citizens? School Vouchers, Political Tolerance, and Civic Engagement,” Journal of School Choice 8, no. 2 (2014): 213–36.

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9. Kristin Goss, Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 29. 10. Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, Deserving and Entitled: Social Constructions and Public Policy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), 26. 11. Eric Patashnik and Julian Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1071–87. 12. Sam Blumenfield, “Homeschooling and Charter Schools,” Practical Homeschooling 28 (1999). 13. Chloe Thurston, At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 14. John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and American Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1990). 15. Michael McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 16. Mitchell Stevens, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 17. Frances Stokes Berry and William D. Berry, “State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 2 (1990): 395–415; Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 198. 18. “State Regulation of Private Schools,” U.S. Department of Education, July 2009, https:// www2.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/regprivschl/regprivschl.pdf. 19. Micah Ann Wixom, “State Homeschool Policies: A Patchwork of Provisions, 50-State Reviews,” Education Commission of the States, 2015, 1, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED558071. 20. “Homeschooling in Pennsylvania: A Fact Sheet,” Education Law Center, 2014, https://www .elc-pa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ELC_FactSheet_HomeschoolingPA_5_2_08 .pdf. 21. Jessica Huseman, “Homeschooling Regulations by State,” ProPublica, August 27, 2015, https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/homeschool. 22. http://www.arkansased.gov/divisions/learning-services/home-school. 23. Arkansas Department of Education, “Fact Sheet on Home Schooling in Arkansas,” n.d., http://www.arkansased.gov/public/userfiles/Learning_Services/Charter%20and%20 Home%20School/Home%20School-Division%20of%20Learning%20Services/FACT _SHEET.pdf. 24. Arkansas Department of Health, “Arkansas 2019–2020 Immunization Exemption Application Packet for Childcare or School Students,” 2020, https://www.healthy.arkansas.gov /images/uploads/pdf/2019-2020_Childcare-School_Immunization_Exemption_Application _Packet.pdf. 25. Worth reiterating from earlier in the book, I use these differences in policy design to select states for the quantitative analysis presented later in this chapter to examine homeschool organizations and communities. See the technical appendix for more details on the selection of states.

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26. Jeffrey Henig, Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 27. Caitlin Gibson and Michael Alison Chandler, “Loudon Moves to Open N. Virginia’s First Charter School,” Washington Post, March 5, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local /education/loudoun-moves-to-open-n-virginias-first-charter-school/2014/03/05 /cf3ea622-a486-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html. 28. “Part 1—Charter Schools Act,” Colorado Department of Education, n.d., http://www.cde .state.co.us/cdechart/csact_part1.

4. THE PILLARS OF HOMESCHOOLING 1. Christopher Klicka, Home School Heroes: The Struggle and Triumph of Home Schooling in America (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2006), 37. 2. Jessica Huseman, “Small Group Goes to Great Lengths to Block Homeschooling Regulation,” ProPublica, August 27, 2015, https://www.propublica.org/article/small-group-goes -great-lengths-to-block-homeschooling-regulation. 3. Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009). 4. Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok, “The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain,” Southern Poverty Law Center, May 17, 2016, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016 /05/17/council-national-policy-behind-curtain. 5. Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 6. Robert H. Salisbury, “An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 13, no. 1 (1969): 1–32. 7. “About Cap,” HSLDA, 2020, http://nche.hslda.org/cap/about.asp. 8. Klicka, Home School Heroes, 259. 9. Kim Yuracko, “Education off the Grid: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling,” California Law Review 96 (2008): 123–84. 10. Congressional Record, September 30, 1994, 269000, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg /GPO-CRECB-1994-pt19/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1994-pt19-3-1.pdf. 11. Jason C. Bivins, The Fracture of Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge to American Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). 12. Michael Farris, The Joshua Generation: Restoring the Heritage of Christian Leadership (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2005), 11, 13. Quoted in David Kirkpatrick, “College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right,” New York Times, March 8, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/us /college-for-the-home-schooled-is-shaping-leaders-for-the-right.html. 14. Samuel Francis, “A Foundation . . . or Empire?” Practical Homeschooling 18 (1997), https:// www.home-school.com/Articles/a-foundation-or-empire.php.

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15. Clay Clarkson and Sally Clarkson, “Back to Christian Homeschool,” Practical Homeschooling 42 (2001), https://www.home-school.com/Articles/back-to-christian-homeschool.php. 16. Kristin Hamerski, “How a Teen Can Learn Civic Leadership,” Practical Homeschooling 54 (2003), http://www.home-school.com/Articles/how-a-teen-can-learn-civic-leadership .php. 17. Michael Reitz, “Homeschoolers and Civic Involvement,” Practical Homeschooling 60 (2004), http://www.home-school.com/Articles/homeschoolers-and-civic-involvement.php. 18. Sam Blumenfeld, “Politics and Homeschoolers: A Primer,” Practical Homeschooling 78 (2007), https://www.home-school.com/Articles/politics-and-homeschoolers-a-primer.php. 19. Based on anonymous interview conducted on June 29, 2018. 20. Christopher Klicka, “Our Honeymoon with the Press Is Over,” Practical Homeschooling 56 (2004), https://www.home-school.com/Articles/our-honeymoon-with-the-press-is-over .php. 21. Based on interview conducted on June 14, 2018. Nielsen voluntarily agreed to have his name used. 22. Based on interview conducted on September 27, 2018. 23. Based on confidential interview conducted on March 13, 2018. 24. Based on confidential interview conducted on July 10, 2018. 25. Hal Young, “No Title,” The Greenhouse Report 23 (2004). 26. Based on confidential email interviews on February 3, 2019 and February 27, 2019. 27. See https://hslda.org/content/commoncore/topic4.aspx. 28. See https://web.archive.org/web/20200404233857/https://hslda.org/content/LandingPages /ChildAbuse/default.asp. 29. Based on confidential interview conducted on March 14, 2018. 30. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 15, 2018. 31. Based on confidential email, March 23, 2018. 32. Based on confidential interview conducted on February 24, 2019. 33. Based on confidential interview conducted on March 26, 2018. 34. Mitchell Stevens, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 7. 35. Based on confidential email, July 10, 2018. 36. Based on confidential interview conducted on March 8, 2019.

5. HOMESCHOOLING ORGANIZATIONAL FEEDBACK AND COMMUNICATIONS 1. Jack Walker, Mobilizing Interest Groups in America: Patrons, Professions, and Social Movements (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). 2. Jeff Henig, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Sarah Reckhow, Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2019).

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3. “Home School Legal Defense Association, Expenditures,” Center for Responsive Politics, https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cmte=C00390526&cycle=2008. (Click desired year to find expenditures.) 4. See the research of political scientist Matthew Lacombe for a related analysis of the National Rifle Association. Matthew Lacombe, “The Political Weaponization of Gun Owners: The NRA’s Cultivation, Dissemination, and Use of a Group Social Identity,” Journal of Politics, 81, no. 4 (2019): 1342–56. 5. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 14, 2018. 6. Clyde Wilcox and Carin Robinson, Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010), 50. 7. Daniel Bennett, Defending Faith: The Politics of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017). 8. Ian Haney-Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Andrew Lewis, The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 9. Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (New York: Norton, 1997). 10. In Stata, I used the factor analysis feature to figure out if the various frames coalesced into a single framing dimension or dimensions, but none of the individual factors had an eigenvalue above 1, suggesting that each variable is a separate frame and captures a distinct dimension of issue framing. 11. Statistically significant at the p-value < .05 level. 12. Based on confidential email interview conducted on July 10, 2018. 13. https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/statement-supporting-the-report-of-the-sandy -hook-advisory-commission/. 14. https://www.qualitycharters.org/2015/10/authorizers-and-policymakers-should-take -action-on-virtual-schools/. 15. https://.www.qualitycharters.org/news-commentary/press-releases/nacsa-president -applauds-findings-of-new-survey-on-new-orleans-charter-schools/ 16. Based on confidential interview conducted on November 26, 2018. 17. Melissa Merry, “Narrative Strategies in the Gun Policy Debate: Exploring Proximity and Social Construction,” Policy Studies Journal 46, no. 4 (2018): 747–70. 18. Gary Layman and Thomas Carsey, “Party Polarization and Party Structuring of Policy Attitudes: A Comparison of Three NES Panel Studies,” Political Behavior 24, no. 3 (2002): 199–236. 19. Ralph Reed, “Casting a Wider Net: Religious Conservatives Move Beyond Abortion and Homosexuality,” Policy Review 65 (Summer 1991): 31–35. 20. Deanna Rohlinger, Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 21. Based on confidential email interview conducted on July 10, 2018. 22. Haney-Lopez, Dog Whistle Politics.

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6. STATE AND LOCAL MOBILIZATION AND POLICY CHANGE 1. Based on confidential interview conducted on July 10, 2018. 2. Jody Smyers, “Tim Lambert: Homeschool Community Mobilizing Against Regulation, Public Education Lobby” (interview), KFYO, February 12, 2018, http://kfyo.com/tim-lambert -home-school-community-mobilizing-against-regulation-public-education-lobby-interview/. 3. Chris Kenning, “California Abuse Case Sparks Calls for Home-Schooling Oversight,” Reuters, January 18, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-captives-homeschool/california -abuse-case-sparks-calls-for-home-schooling-oversight-idUSKBN1F721R. 4. “State Statutes Search,” Child Welfare Information Gateway, March 2019, https://www .childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/laws-policies/state/. 5. Unlike in many other states at this time, there was considerable ideological variation within the Republican Party in Texas, which included Far Right conservatives and more moderate centrists. 6. Brian Ray, “Homeschoolers on to College: What Research Shows Us,” National Home Education Research Institute, 2004, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ682480.pdf. 7. Based on confidential interview conducted on February 24, 2019. 8. Kurt Bauman, “Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics,” U.S. Census Working Paper No. 53, 2001, https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation /twps0053/twps0053.html. 9. See https://www.leadershipinstitute.org/training/contact.cfm?FacultyID=2658. 10. See https://web.archive.org/web/20041001070656/http://www.hs4bush.net/. 11. Alana Wise, “Republican Cruz Taps Homeschool Niche in Battle for Texas,” Reuters, February 29, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cruz-homeschoolers/republican -cruz-taps-homeschool-niche-in-battle-for-texas-idUSMTZSAPEC2TBMVGGT. 12. I collected information from ProPublica’s nonprofit database on homeschooling in the eight states chosen for the study. See the technical appendix for more details. 13. Based on confidential interview conducted on July 17, 2018. 14. Based on confidential interview conducted on November 26, 2018. 15. Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 16. The primary sources of organization data were three websites: thehomeschoolmom.com, hslda.org, and secularhomeschool.com. I should note that this process is not as precise as using IRS nonprofit data, but it does paint a fuller picture of the variety of organizations serving homeschoolers, many too small or not formally incorporated to be seen by the IRS. In order to verify the existence of these informal organizations, a group of graduate assistants made phone calls, sent emails, and searched the Internet for signs of ongoing operations, such as an active answering machine, returned emails, or a website or social media page that included evidence of recent updating. Organizations that could not be found online or that had outdated information were deemed inactive and eliminated from the data collection.

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17. Based on confidential email interview conducted on February 27, 2019. 18. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 22, 2018. 19. Eric Patashnik and Julian Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics: Liberal Reform and the Limits of Policy Feedback in the Contemporary American State,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 1071–87. 20. Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics.” 21. Andrea Vieux, “The Politics of Homeschools: Religious Conservatives and Regulation Requirements,” Social Science Journal 51, no. 4 (2014): 556–63. 22. Andrea Vieux, “Do Not Count Them Out Just Yet: Assessing the Impact of Religious Conservatives on Charter School Regulations,” Social Science Quarterly 95, no. 2 (2014): 411–24. 23. Thomas T. Holyoke et al., “Policy Dynamics and the Evolution of State Charter School Laws,” Policy Sciences 42, no. 1 (2009): 33–55. 24. Patashnik and Zelizer, “The Struggle to Remake Politics.” 25. Thomas T. Holyoke and Heath Brown, “After the Punctuation: Competition, Uncertainty, and Convergent State Policy Change,” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 19, no. 1 (March 2019): 3–28. 26. Wendy Chi and Kevin Welner, “Charter Ranking Roulette: An Analysis of Reports That Grade Charter School Laws,” American Journal of Education 114 (2008): 273–98. 27. John Witte, Arnold Shober, and Paul Manna, “Analyzing State Charter School Laws and Their Influence on the Formation of Charter Schools in the United States,” Policy Studies Journal 34 (November 2006): 563–88. 28. Holyoke and Brown, “After the Punctuation.” 29. Terry Moe, “Teachers Unions and American Education Reform: The Politics of Blocking,” The Forum 10, no. 1 (2012): 1–30, 30. 30. Jeffrey Henig, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Sarah Reckhow, Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2019); Megan Tompkins-Stange, Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2016); Janelle Scott, “The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy,” Educational Policy, 23, no. 1 (2009): 106–36. 31. Henig, Jacobsen, and Reckhow, Outside Money, 3. 32. Gary Miron, “Description and Brief History of Charter Schools: What Are the Main Issues? What Do the Data Say About Their Effectiveness?” in The Wiley Handbook of School Choice, ed. Robert A. Fox and Nina K. Buchanan (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2017), 224–36, 234. 33. Jeffrey Henig et al., “Privatization, Politics, and Urban Services: The Political Behavior of Charter Schools,” Journal of Urban Affairs 25, no. 1 (2003): 37–54. 34. Quoted in Jessica Huseman, “Small Group Goes to Great Lengths to Block Homeschooling Regulation,” ProPublica, August 27, 2015, https://www.propublica.org/article /small-group-goes-great-lengths-to-block-homeschooling-regulation. 35. Based on confidential interview conducted on January 29, 2019.

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36. Available at https://hslda.org/content/laws/. 37. “National Charter School Law Ranking and Scorecard,” Center for Education Reform, March 2017, https://www.edreform.com/2017/03/national-charter-school-law-rankings-scorecard/. 38. Wayne Au, “Chartering Charade in Washington State: The Anti-Democratic Politics of the Charter School Movement and the Removal of the Public from Public Education,” in The Charter School Solution: Distinguishing Fact from Rhetoric, ed. Tara L. Affolter and Jamel K. Donnor (New York: Routledge, 2016). 39. Kate Stringer, “Are Charter Schools Legal in Washington State? As Sector Continues to Grow, Court Will Take Up the Question—Again,” The 74, May 16, 2018, https://www .the74million.org/are-charter-schools-legal-in-washington-state-as-sector-continues-to -grow-court-will-take-up-the-question-again/. 40. http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/897140.pdf. 41. Elizabeth DeBray-Pelot, Christopher A. Lubienski, and Janelle T. Scott, “The Institutional Landscape of Interest Group Politics and School Choice,” Peabody Journal of Education 82, nos. 2–3 (2007): 204–30. 42. Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 189. 43. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 22, 2018. 44. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 22, 2018.

7. POLITICAL BEHAVIOR AND COMMUNITY EFFECTS 1. Kevin Williamson, “The Last Radicals,” National Review, October 15, 2012, https://www .nationalreview.com/magazine/2012/10/15/last-radicals/. 2. Sheryl Stolberg, “For Bachmann, God and Justice Were Intertwined,” New York Times, October 13, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/us/politics/bachmanns-years-at-oral -roberts-university.html. 3. Michele Bachmann, Core of Conviction: My Story (New York: Penguin, 2011). 4. Available at https://secure.hslda.org/docs/hshb/113/hshb11347.asp. 5. Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 6. Stephanie Condon, “Michele Bachmann: Tea Party a ‘Force for Good,’ ” CBS News, January 26, 2011, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michele-bachmann-tea-party-a-force-for -good/. 7. Christopher Baylor, First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformation (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2017). 8. Paul Vitello, “Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families,” New York Times, December 17, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/us/politics/17huckabee.html. 9. Vitello, “Huckabee Draws Support.” 10. Kevin Diaz, “Bachmann Praises the Iowa Staffer Who Sued Her,” StarTribune, June 30, 2013, http://www.startribune.com/bachmann-praises-the-iowa-staffer-who-sued-her /213759931.

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11. Jason Grumet, “The Tea Party Will Make Our Democracy Better,” US News and World Report, October 18, 2013, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/10/18/how-the -tea-party-is-helping-american-democracy-work. 12. Beth Henry-Vance, “County Again Votes to Close School,” The Inter-Mountain, January 18, 2017, http://www.theintermountain.com/news/local-news/2017/01/county-again-votes -to-close-school/. 13. Kendra Majors, “2017 Enrollment: Homeschool Affects County Rolls Books,” Andalusia Star-News, October 12, 2017, http://m.andalusiastarnews.com/2017/10/12/2017-enrollment -homeschool-affects-county-rolls-books/. 14. Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, Deserving and Entitled: Social Constructions and Public Policy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005. 15. Kristin Goss, “Civil Society and Civic Engagement: Towards a Multilevel Theory of Policy Feedbacks,” Journal of Civil Society 6, no. 2 (2010): 119–43. 16. Michael Apple, “Away with All Teachers: The Cultural Politics of Home Schooling,” in Homeschooling in New View, ed. Bruce S. Cooper, Frances R. Spielhagen, and Carlo Ricci (Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2011), 45–64, 50. 17. Scott Abernathy, School Choice and the Future of American Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 95; Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). 18. James Cox and Christopher Witko, “School Choice and the Creation of Social Capital Reexamined,” American Journal of Political Science 52 (2008): 142–55. 19. Abernathy, School Choice, 95. 20. James Cook et al., “Government Privatization and Political Participation: The Case of Charter Schools,” Journal of Politics 82, no. 1 (2020): 300–14. 21. Suzanne Mettler and Joe Soss, “The Consequences of Public Policy for Democratic Citizenship: Bridging Policy Studies and Mass Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 55–73, 62. 22. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Abernathy, School Choice. 23. Amy Lerman, Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (and What We Can Do to Fix It) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 24. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 111–27. 25. Bruce Cooper and John Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling: New Developments, New Challenges,” Education Policy 21, no. 1(2007): 110–31, 126. 26. Based on confidential email interview conducted on February 27, 2019. 27. The findings of Schneider, Ingram, and Goss on the alienation associated with third-party policy design are also potentially useful to what we might predict. 28. “Riches of the Lenox Library,” The Berkshire Eagle, April 17, 2007, https://www.berkshireeagle .com/stories/riches-of-the-lenox-library,471030. 29. Based on confidential interview conducted on June 22, 2018. 30. Rob Reich, “The Civic Perils of Homeschooling,” Educational Leadership 59, no. 7 (2002): 56–59.

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31. Cooper and Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling,” 128. 32. Brian Ray, “Homeschoolers on to College: What Research Shows Us,” National Home Education Research Institute, 2004, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ682480.pdf. 33. The nonexperimental methods used in these studies do not add up to a strong causal claim that homeschooling leads to higher civic engagement, but the findings do assuage worries that homeschooling would lead to enormous differences in student social and civic involvement. 34. Christian Smith and David Sikkink, “Is Private Schooling Privatizing?” First Things, No. 92, April 1999, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ ft9904/articles/smith.html. 35. Albert Cheng, “Does Homeschooling or Private Schooling Promote Political Intolerance? Evidence from a Christian University,” Journal of School Choice 8, no. 1 (2014): 49–68. 36. Loren Collingwood and Benjamin O’Brien Gonzalez, “Public Opposition to Sanctuary Cities in Texas: Criminal Threat or Immigration Threat?” Social Science Quarterly 100 (2019): 1182–96. 37. In Virginia, independent cities are counted as counties. 38. In order to make these calculations, I added the estimate of county homeschool enrollment to the estimate of school enrollment from the U.S. Census, available here: https:// www.census.gov/library/publications/2011/compendia/usa-counties-2011.html#EDU. To address missing county data, I estimated enrollment by projecting missing data based on existing data for the three most recently available years. In 2016, the mean four-year percentage change in homeschool enrollment was 1.3 percent and the mean percentage of homeschoolers out of total school enrollment was 3.36 percent (standard deviation 2.00). 39. Available at http://dese.ade.arkansas.gov/divisions/learning-services/home-school/home -school-reports. 40. Economic factors relate to political participation, famously correlated with presidential election outcomes; see John Sides and Lynn Vavreck, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). I include a variable for the county unemployment rate. I also add a variable measuring whether the school-age population was rising or declining over the previous four years (measured as the percent change in enrollment), with declining enrollment an indicator of a weak local economy. The unemployment variable had a mean of 5.7 percent and a standard deviation of 1.69. Demographic characteristics of those living in a county also typically relate to voting—race and ethnicity are two prominent factors to consider. I include the percentage of the county population that is white non-Hispanic and a measure of the percent change in Hispanic population, both supplied by the U.S. Census Bureau. States also vary in the competitiveness of the presidential campaigns, which relates to how much parties spend on Get Out the Vote (GOTV ) efforts and the resulting higher turnout. I include a dichotomous variable for electoral competitiveness equal to “1” if neither party won greater than 60 percent of the vote (competitive) and “0” if one party won greater than 60 percent of the vote (uncompetitive). I also add a variable capturing the percentage of the county population supporting the Republican presidential candidate.

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41. Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto, Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 42. Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 182. 43. Bryan Gervais and Irwin Morris, Reactionary Republicanism: How the Tea Party in the House Paved the Way for Trump’s Victory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 44. Lisa Disch, “The Tea Party: A ‘White Citizenship’ Movement?” in Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party, ed. Lawrence Rosenthal and Christine Trost (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 133–51, 143. 45. Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 37. 46. The 2015 version of the software was developed at the University of Texas, Austin, and is available for download at: http://liwc.wpengine.com/. 47. Figures include some published in Gervais and Morris, Reactionary Republicanism, and some shared by Bryan Gervais via private email. 48. Because of the skew in the variable and the relatively large number of counties with no Tea Party organizations, I converted this variable to a dichotomous variable to compare counties with at least one organization versus none. 49. American Majority Team, “Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation Convention,” American Majority, August 18, 2010, https://americanmajority.org/activist-training/virginia-tea-party -patriots-federation-convention/. 50. See https://web.archive.org/web/20100707055257/http://www.teapartypatriots.org/GroupNew /9b7832c5-ec0b-470b-a5f4-3b9cbe287620/Clark_County_Tea_Party. 51. See https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/c3hso/info. 52. As with the analysis earlier, I restrict my comparisons to relatively small counties to address the ecological fallacy issue. 53. Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne), June 19, 2011. 54. Like the Tea Party organization data, I recode the variable into a dichotomous measure to compare counties that had one or more protests with counties that had none. 55. As with the earlier analysis of spillover effects and political behavior, these findings are not causal. Several other factors likely relate to the popularity of both homeschooling and the Tea Party. The short history of the Tea Party and the limited data on homeschooling further limit more advanced statistical techniques and conclusions about cause and effect. 56. Quoted in Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote and Why Politicians Want It That Way (Boston: Beacon, 2000), 247.

CONCLUSION 1. Michael Farris, “I Helped Start the Moral Majority. Trump Is the Opposite of What We Wanted,” Washington Post, June 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything /wp/2016/06/23/i-helped-start-the-moral-majority-trump-is-the-opposite-of-what-we -wanted/?utm_term=.8f63b5035213.

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2. Kimberly Hefling, “Hillary Clinton Rebukes Charter Schools,” Politico, November 9, 2015, https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/hillary-clinton-charter-schools-education-215661. 3. Democratic Party Platform. Available at https://democrats.org/about/party-platform/. 4. Ledyard King, “Home Schooled Teens Helped Republicans Win Key Races,” USA Today, November 18, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/11/18 /home-schooled-teens-helped-republicans-win-key-senate-races/94072084/. 5. “Interview with Betsy DeVos, the Reformer,” Philanthropy, Spring 2013, https://www .philanthropyroundtable.org/philanthropy-magazine/article/spring-2013-interview -with-betsy-devos-the-reformer. 6. Jane Mayer, “Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Big-Donor Education Secretary,” New Yorker, November 23, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/betsy-devos-trumps-big -donor-education-secretary. 7. “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority,” Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files /final-conscience-rule.pdf. 8. James Penning and Corwin Smidt, “What Coalition? Divisions in the Christian Right,” The Christian Century 114, no. 2 (1997), https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-19046662 /what-coalition-divisions-in-the-christian-right. 9. Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 10. Matt Grossmann, “Did Conservatives Transform State Education Policy?” fifteeneightyfour (blog), Cambridge University Press, November 14, 2019, http://www.cambridgeblog .org/2019/11/did-conservatives-transform-state-education-policy/. 11. Available at https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/610/text?q= percent7B” search”percent3A percent5B”hr+610”percent5D percent7D&r=1. 12. William Estrada, “4 Ways That HR 610 Will Threaten Your Rights,” HSLDA, https:// nche.hslda.org/docs/news/2017/201702140.asp. 13. See https://hslda.org/content/docs/news/2017/20171208_ESA_529_plans.asp. 14. Carolyn Phenicie, “Homeschooling, Higher Ed Provisions Force Last-Minute Tax Reform Re-Do,” The 47, December 20, 2017, https://www.the74million.org/article/home schooling-higher-ed-provisions-force-last-minute-tax-reform-re-do/. 15. “Digest of Education Statistics,” National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces .ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_040.asp. 16. Eric Wearne, “A Descriptive Survey of Why Parents Choose Hybrid Homeschools,” in Homeschooling in the 21st Century: Research and Prospects, ed. Robert Maranto and Debra A. Bell (New York: Routledge, 2018). 17. Leslie Finger and Sarah Reckhow, “Shifting Alliances in State Political Parties: The Case of Education Interest Groups,” EdWorkingPaper No. 20-189, Annenberg Institute at Brown University, 2020, https://www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai20-189 .pdf. 18. Eric Blanc, Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (New York: Verso, 2019).

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19. “EducationNext Annual Poll: Trends Through 2018,” https://www.educationnext.org /ednext-poll-interactive-trends-through-2018-public-opinion/. 20. Charles Barone, Dana Laurens, and Nicholas Munyan-Penney, “A Democratic Guide to Public Charter Schools: Public Opinion,” May 2019, http://dfer.org/wp-content /uploads/2019/05/A-Democratic-Guide-to-Public-Charter-Schools-Public-Opinion.pdf. 21. David Hopkins, “Republicans Can Win Back the Suburbs. Here’s How. They Can Start by Engaging on the Issue of Education,” New York Times, November 19, 2019, https://www .nytimes.com/2019/11/19/opinion/republicans-suburbs-education.html.

APPENDIX 1. Rory McVeigh, Kraig Beyerlein, Burrell Van, Jr., “Educational Segregation, Tea Party Organizations, and Battles Over Distributive Justice,” American Sociological Review 79, no. 4, 630–652.

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INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and page numbers in bold refer to tables. Notes are indicated by page number, roman “n,” and note number. Abernathy, Scott, 161–62 abortion: access to, as ‘secular humanist’ attack on conservative values, 119; conservatives against, 11, 72, 189–90; CWA’s opposition to, 103, 129; evangelicals against, 68, 190; Farris on homeschoolers reversing Row v. Wade, 10; freedom policies on, 32; homeschool students and families against, 12, 197; HSLDA on, 131; New Right’s use of, for political gains, 59; NRLC’s opposition to, 129; Rohlinger on avoiding issue expansion by groups opposing, 129; social identity and policies on, 136; Trump on, 187, 191. See also unborn accountability: charter school policies on, 78, 84t, 88t, 98, 122, 150, 154–55, 188; conservatives on educational, 79; democratic, 23, 34, 42, 47, 89; Democratic Party on, 195; education policies on, 194; in freedom policy approach, 34, 38; homeschool policies on, 84t, 88t; limiting, by not reporting information, 34; parallel politics and, 23; for public schools, 40, 82–83, 84t; school voucher policies on, 84t Acting on God’s Authority as Parent Educators (AGAPE), 2

affirmative action, 107, 136 Affordable Care Act (ACA), 31 African Americans: books written by, Kanawha County school protests on, 49, 52; on charter schools, 194; conservative’s coded language on, 136; Democratic Party policies and, 38–39; freedom policies and, 29; political rights for, 32; Reconstructionera laws on public education of, 56; on school boards, 60; suffrage for, 41. See also blacks agenda, conservative: on abortion, 189–90; civil rights and, 24; of CWA, 129; Francis on, 108; freedom policies and, 47; homeschool movement and, 11, 85; on immigration, 189; incremental policy change in, 37; on LGBTQ issues, 189; New Right’s strategy for, 68, 72; opposition to government actions and policies in, 24; Reed on developing broader, 129; Republican Party ideology and, 25; Trump and, 189 agenda, liberal, 134 Akin, Todd, 179 Alabama, 160 Alamance County, 164

INDEX

Alaska, 95, 98 alienation, 86, 161, 172, 228n27 Alliance Defending Freedom, 132 American Coalition for Traditional Values, 12 American Federation of Teachers, 76 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 14–15, 17, 25, 27, 31, 185 American Majority magazine, 182 American National Election Studies (ANES), 168–74, 169t, 170t, 173t, 180, 202 American Opinion magazine, 51 American RadioWorks, 215n1 Americans for Prosperity (AFP), 15 Americans for Tax Reform, 12 Amish, 61. See also Yoder v. Wisconsin anticommunism, 12, 25 antigovernment contagion, 163 Apple, Michael, 161 Arapahoe County, 183 Arizona, 93, 152, 194 Arkansas: CER ranking of charter school policies in, 152; charter school policies in, 99t; Clark County, 183; compulsory education laws in, 96; Education Alliance in, 183; “failure to educate” as basis of child abuse in, 137; Fayetteville Secular Homeschoolers, 114; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176, 229n39; homeschooled students in, 164; homeschool informal organizations in, 146, 147t; homeschool leader on HSLDA as a type of insurance in, 109–10; homeschool policies in, 95, 96–97, 99t, 147, 201, 221n25; HSLDA ranking of homeschool policies in, 152; Phillips, Searcy, and Stone Counties, 176; Tea Party organizations in Clark County, 183; White County, 164 Armey, Richard, 106 Association of Roman Catholic Homeschoolers (ARCH), 114 asymmetric partisan polarization, 24 athletic activities, 16, 19, 140, 143 Aurora Tea Party, 183 Autobiography of Malcolm X, 49 Bachmann, Michele, 12, 157–58, 179, 185 Barton, David, 13 Bauman, Kurt, 141 Baylor, Christopher, 119

Benedict Option, The (Dreher), 14 Bennett, William, 78 Bible-based legal strategies, 66 Bible studies, 10, 55, 58, 70, 215n4 Biblical Educator (BE) newsletter, 70 Biden, Joe, 195 bipartisan consensus, 24, 38, 46, 75, 78–80, 194–95 blacks, 59. See also African Americans Blanc, Eric, 194 Blumenfield, Sam, 108 Bob Jones University, 59 Bromley East Charter School Parent Teacher Organization, 144 Brookings Institution, 27 Brown, Heath, 149–50 Brown v. Board of Education, 57, 84 Bruderhof communities, 14 Buckley, Jack, 145 Budde, Ray, 76, 79, 83 Burger, Warren, 61 Burke, Edmund, 125 Bush (GWB) administration, 38 Bush, George H. W., 75 Bush, George W. (GWB), 14, 141, 191, 195 California, 97, 131, 133, 137–38, 194 capitalism, 25 Carlee, Ron, 35 Carson, Ben, 12 Carter, Jimmy, 57 Catholic schools, 86. See also parochial schools Cato Institute, 27 Center for Education Reform (CER), 98–99, 149–52 Center for Law & Religious Freedom, The, 132 Center for Responsible Politics, 117 Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 38 Central Elementary School, 1 certification: charter school groups on, 131; of charter school teachers, 83, 98; exemption from mandatory, 34; Holt on advanced degrees and, 63, 85; homeschool movement on, 131; homeschool policies on, 4, 63, 85; of magnet school teachers, 82–83; Miller’s amendment to ESEA on, 104–6 Chalcedon Foundation, 65–66, 93 Challem County, 176 charitable donations, 172–74, 173t charitable service, 86

234

INDEX

Charter Friends National Network (CFNN), 78 Charter School Expansion Act, 79 charter school groups: agenda of, 149; associations, alliances, or advocacy, 144; on certification, 131; on changing policies, 150; civil society for, 88t; collective action by, 145; communication strategies of, 118; composition & size of local & state, 139–48; counting, 142; on curriculum and instruction, 130f; on facilities and buildings, 130f, 131; on financing and funding, 130f, 131; framing of issues by, 91, 118, 120–24, 121f, 123t, 124t, 135; on government, 134; Hirschman’s “exit, voice, loyalty” framework applied to, 161; issue expansion by, 129–31; linguistic analysis of communications from, 180–82, 181t; lobbying by, 117, 133–35, 151; mission of, 145; on noneducational issues, 129–31, 130f; nonprofit, 143t, 144–45, 151; opposition to government bureaucracies by, 79; organizational ecology of, 139, 144–45; in parallel politics, 139; on policy design, 88t, 91–92; political participation by parents in, 161–62; on school vouchers, 130f, 131; on special education, 130f; on teacher issues, 130f, 131; types of informal, 143t, 144 charter school policies: on accountability, 78, 84t, 88t, 98, 122, 150, 154–55, 188; adoption of, 97–101, 99t; on assessment of academic progress, 100; on authority to issue charters, 98–100; on autonomy, 76, 99–100, 122, 150; CER on, 98–99, 149–52; on certification of teachers, 83, 98; changing, 88t, 148–52, 153f; as conservative freedom, 97; on curriculum and pedagogy, 84t; on data reporting requirements, 84t; design of, 83, 84t, 88t, 101; development of, 54; disparate state and local environments for, 139–48; ECS on, 98; enactment phase for, 148; evangelicals and, 149; expansion of, 91; expectations about effects from, 88t; as freedom policies, 97; on funding and resources, 84t, 99–100, 154–55; to generate political feedback, 79; vs. homeschool policies, 23, 77, 80–81, 84t, 100, 139–40, 196; identity and, 88t, 91; implementation of, 148–49; institutions and, 36f, 83, 88t, 91, 100; Kolderie’s paper

on, 77; markets and design of, 91; on number of schools allowed in the state, 98–100; on participation and enrollment, 84t; on partisan civic activities, 142; on per-pupil funding, 83; on personnel and teachers in, 84t, 98, 99; political centrism in development of, 54, 77, 80–81; premise of, 83; vs. public school policies, 84t; vs. school voucher policies, 84t; teachers’ unions and, 75–77, 83, 149–50; on testing, 84t, 150; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 88t; transparency in, 188; in United States, 97–101, 98f, 99t charter school policy feedback: vs. homeschool policy feedback, 23, 53–54, 80, 89–92, 152; indicators of positive, 54; interest group communication strategies in, 117–18; proximity and visibility of, 88t, 163 charter schools: African Americans on, 194–95; authorization process for, 83; bipartisan consensus on, 78, 80; centrist political coalition backing, 92, 188; civil rights laws adhered to in, 83; civil rights movement on, 77, 120, 154–55; as common schools, 154; conservative movement on, 54, 79; contract to operate, with for-profit company, 83, 150; creation of, 75–80; data reporting requirements for, 84t; Democratic Party on, 77–78, 80, 187–88, 194–95, 231n3; demographics of students and families, 6–7, 7t; in education policies, 2; enrollment in, 5–6, 5f, 84t; funding and resources for, 76, 83, 84t, 144–45; health and safety rules for, 83; Hispanic Americans on, 194–95; innovation in, 122; libertarians on, 77; vs. magnet schools, 83; participation in, 84t; personnel and teachers in, 83, 84t; reasons for choosing, 8; Republican Party support for, 79, 80; rules and regulations for, 76, 83; special education provided in, 83; status quo coalition on, 39t; student achievement in, 83; testing in, 78, 83, 85; Trump on civil rights and, 13; voting in districts with/without, 161–62; whites on, 195. See also charter school groups; charter school policies child abuse, 112, 123, 137–38 child care, 170 children’s rights, 122

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Cho, Tam, 206 choice: coded terms for, 203t; communication strategies focused on, 135; freedom policies based on, 30–31, 33, 47; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 126t, 126f, 127–28, 127t; issue framing on, 69, 120, 121f, 122, 123t, 124, 124t, 135 Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, 12 Christian Broadcasting Network, 105 Christian Coalition, 72, 73, 190 Christian conservatives: Cruz presidential campaign and, 13; economic libertarianism, homeschooling, and, 10–11; homeschool organizations associated with, 114; HSLDA as representing, 103, 106, 111–12; intellectual framework for reformation of society by, 71–72; national groups representing, 12; New Right’s mobilizing of, 25, 60; pact with Gingrich on candidates, 72; Phillips on Rushdoony and, 66; Practical Homeschooling articles on political engagement of, 107–9; Tea Party and, 180; on values in society, 72; as victims, 11, 60 Christian Heritage Home Educators of Washington, 114 Christian homeschool students and families, 6 Christianity: homeschool organizations and, 112; Kanawha County’s textbook protests and, 49; North’s view of, 69–71; political entrepreneurs on federal efforts to undermine, 60; in public schools, Supreme Court rulings on, 57–58; Rushdoony’s ideas on, 65 Christian schools: Bible-centered pedagogy in, 10; Biblical Educator on, 70; Christian Coalition on expansion of, 73; in conservative political strategy, 10, 54; enrollment in, 5, 73; Horan’s creation of, in Kanawha County, 50; IRS and, 11, 66; legislation to give Department of Education authority over, 66; North on, 70–72; Paul on independence for, 10; public funds for, Rushdoony on, 67; taxexempt requests from segregated, 59 Church League of America, 12 Cies, William, 66 cities, charter and homeschool students living in, 7 citizen action campaigns, 117 Citizens Defense League, 165–66

Citizens for Decency Through Law, 51 City Academic charter school, 78 civic culture, 56 civic engagement, 166–67, 229n33. See also political participation civic loss, 163 Civil Rights Act, 57 civil rights movement: on charter schools, 77, 120, 154–55; Democratic Party and, 24; on discriminatory public-private housing policy, 91; educational equity and, 56; evangelical’s resistant to, 68; HEW and, 57; liberal policies and, 32; political conservatism and, 29; public schools and, 56; Republican Party and, 24; on school vouchers, 40; against segregationist policies and practices, 32 civil society: for charter school groups, 88t; evangelical “prosperity gospel” and, 12; from freedom policies, 86–87, 90; for homeschool students and families, 2, 14–15, 86, 88t, 146; infrastructure for, HSLDA’s building of, 9; parallelism in, 14–15; social media and, 146; support for social welfare state and, 160–61 Civil War, Confederate Flag and monuments to, 107–8 Clark County, Christian Homeschool Organization and Tea Party in, 183 Clarkson, Clay and Sally, 108 Cleaver, Eldridge, 49 Clinton, Bill, 73, 77, 79, 134, 195 Clinton, Hillary, 12, 187–88, 194 Cloward, Richard, 230n56 Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), 112, 118, 122, 193, 204 Cold War, 26, 68 collective, problems adhering to, 86 collective bargaining, 32, 82–83, 99–100 collectivism, 25, 65 colleges or universities, admission to, 32 Collingwood, Loren, 175 Colman, Rachel, 122 Colorado: Arapahoe County, 183; authority to grant charters in, 99; Bromley East Charter School Parent Teacher Organization, 144; charter school policies in, 97, 99–100, 99t; “failure to educate” as basis of child abuse in, 137; homeschool data in presidential election years from,

236

INDEX

176; homeschool informal organizations in, 147t, 183; homeschool policies in, 94, 99t, 147, 201; Tea Party organizations in Arapahoe County, 183 Commerce Clause, 134 Common Core curriculum, 15, 112, 194 Concerned Women for America (CWA), 103, 129 Confederate Flag, 107 congressional action program (CAP) of HSLDA, 104–6 “conscience rights,” 32, 189 conservatism, 10–11, 25, 29 Conservative Caucus, 66 conservative movement: on charter schools, 54, 79; coded language used by, 135–36; donations and funding for, 27–28; framing of issues by, 92, 118–19; Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act support from, 31; fusing of Christian, pro-business, and libertarians in, 119; homeschool policies and, 17, 22–23, 81, 167–68, 185; HSLDA and, 103, 111–12; immigration policies of, 191; institutions and, 23, 87, 90; New Right’s building of, 25; nonconservatives in homeschool movement and, 54; opposition to, 194; parallel politics of, 16–17, 23, 54; policy strategists in, 72; pro-business policies of, 191; racial dog-whistle politics of, 119; and Reagan’s view of freedom, 26; on school choice, 54; on taxes, 191; Trump’s election as victory for, 189; on voting, 185 conservatives: against abortion, 11, 72, 189–90; ANES on, 168–74, 169t; campaign donations by, 28; charitable donations from, 172–74, 173t; coded language on race, 136; community engagement by, 172, 173t, 174; in consumer protests, 172, 173t; contacting officials in government, 172, 173t, 174; on educational accountability, 79; education policies of, 3, 11–12; Federalist Society formed by, 15; focus on “freedom” by, 47–48; on government, 172, 173t; vs. homeschool students & families, 172–74, 174t, 185–86; on IRS not granting taxexempt status to segregation academies, 59; market-based ideologies of, 10, 17; membership in organizations, 172, 173t; “model legislation” written by ALEC for, 14–15; on occupational licenses, 41; policy

entrepreneurs on social issues, 11–12; political strategies of, 10, 17, 27–28; on reducing regulations on corporations, 191; Republican Party and, 39, 54; on same-sex marriage, 11, 190; on school prayer, 11; self-identifying as, homeschool parent’s, 168, 169t; self-identifying as, homeschool parents, 185; Tea Party ideology, political tactics, and, 180; undermining existing political institutions, 23; volunteering by, 173–74, 173t; on voting, 173, 173t; Weyrich’s “Letter to Conservatives,” 73. See also Christian conservatives consumer mentality, 16 consumers: business regulations protecting, 189; homeschool students and families as, 16, 75, 91; issue framing on power of, 91; protests, participation in, 172–73, 173t; Republican Party platform on, 26 contraception, 32 “Conversion Therapy,” 133 Conway, Kellyanne, 66 Cooper, Bruce, 164, 166 Coors, Joseph, Sr., 51, 66 corporations, 28, 33, 191 Council for National Policy (CNP), 51, 66, 103, 188 COVID-19 pandemic, 2 Cox, James, 161 Crane, Philip, 51 crime, 170 criminal justice policies, 45, 46–47 Cruz, Ted, 12–13, 141, 192–93 Cuccinelli, Ken, 141 culture, Rushdoony’s rejection of secular, 65 culture wars, 71, 73, 108, 191 curfews, 129–31 curricula: Common Core, 15, 112, 194; competition to improve, 75; development of, 141; homeschool policies on, 84t, 85, 95–96; HSLDA conventions on, 104; Kanawha school board’s objections to public high school, 49–50; market for homeschool, 11, 16, 88, 148; nonprofit organizations providing, 143; North’s influence on homeschool, 69; online civics, on presidential election, 141; policies on, 84t; for private schools, 84; Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum, 10, 71; standardization of, 75, 79

237

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Davis, T. Cullen, 66 DeBray-Pelot, Elizabeth, 77 Deep Young Academy, 2 Delaware, 152 democratic accountability, 23, 34, 42, 47, 89 democratic mentality, 16 Democratic Party: on accountability, 195; African Americans and policies of, 38–39; after Second World War, 24; centrists in, 77, 187; on charter schools, 77–78, 80, 187–88, 194–95, 231n3; civil rights movement and, 24; disproportionality in policy participation in, 38; on education policies, 39–40, 194–95; environmentalists and policies of, 38–39; freedom policies and, 29, 38–41, 39t, 47; GOTV efforts of, 229n40; HSLDA framing of issues when president is from, 126t; interest group’s framing of issues when president is from, 123t; LGBTQ community and policies of, 38–39; on Medical Modernization Act, 38; parallel politics and power of, 23; on public schools, 194–95; on school choice, 39–40, 194–95; on school vouchers, 39–40; single-issue and identity groups in, 38–39; on teachers’ unions, 194; on testing, 195; unions and policies of, 38–39; women and policies of, 38–39 Department of Education, 5, 57, 66, 78–79, 188 Department of Health and Human Services, 32 Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare (HEW), 50, 57 DeVos, Betsy, 3, 188, 193 Dewey, John, 65 Dickey Amendment, 38 direct-mail fundraising, 68, 72 disability rights movement, 29 disabled students, 8, 40 discrimination, reducing, as policy goal, 46 disproportionality in policy participation, 38 distance learning programs, 164. See also virtual (online) school programs District of Columbia, 59, 94, 132, 145, 152 Dobson, James, 68–69 Dole, Bob, 167, 190 Dornan, Robert, 51 driver licensing, 129–31

Eagle Forum, 12, 141 Eaton, Fran, 141 economic class, 6, 7t, 25, 40, 190. See also low-income students and families; poor; socioeconomic factors economic libertarianism, 10–11, 25 economic policies, 12, 24–25, 190 economy, local, 177, 229n40 Edelblut, Frank, 3 education: charter school parents with posthigh school, 6; choice-based freedom policies on, 31; federal educational savings account plans (529s) for, 192; homeschool parents with post-high school, 6; market-based reforms for, 60, 80–81; North on Christianity and, 70–71; public spending on, 46; quality and efficiency of, 91; Rabushka on individuals providing for their own, 30; Republican Party on standards-and-excellence plans for, 78 Education Alliance, 183 educational management organizations, 150 education budgets, governors who cut state, 195 Education Commission of the States (ECS), 95, 97, 98, 151 education policies: on accountability, 194; “Battle of House Resolution 6” by HSLDA, 104–6; bipartisan consensus on, 195; centralization of, 60; charter schools in, 2; conservative policy victories on, 190; of conservatives, 3, 11–12; Democratic Party on, 39–40, 194–95; design of, 82; direct outcome of, 42; ESEA, 57, 104–6; Farris on, 9; history of, in the United States, 54–58; Holt on lobbying strategies for, 63; homeschooler’s influence over, 12; on homeschooling, 2; HSLDA lobbying on, 106; inside lobbying tactics for, 117; Kolderie on monopoly on, by school districts, 78; policy feedback effects on, 42–43, 82; for public schools, 58; Republican Party on, 28, 195; Rushdoony’s criticism of government involvement in, 65; school vouchers in, 2; state and local, including private schools, 58; state control over, 60; teacher’s activism on, 194; Trump election and, 194

238

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efficiency, economic: communication strategies focused on, 135; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 126t, 126f, 127, 127t; issue framing on, 91, 119–20, 121f, 122, 123t, 124, 124t efficiency, educational, 91 efficiency, social, 33 Eisenhower, Dwight, 57 El Centro de la Raza, 154 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), 57, 104–6 energy, 26, 117 Engel v. Vitale, 58 environment, 169t, 170, 189, 191 environmentalists, 38–39 Equal Rights Amendment, 59, 103 equity: charter school’s impact on, 154–55; coded terms for, 203t; communication strategies focused on, 135–36; educational, civil rights movement and, 56; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 126t, 126f, 127, 127t; issue framing on, 118–20, 121f, 123t, 124t; redistributional social spending programs to improve social, 46; residential, support for, 35 Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 84 ethnicity, 13, 108, 120, 203t, 229n40 euthanasia, 131 evangelicalism, 215n4 evangelicals: against abortion, 68, 190; in elections, 72; fundamentalists and, 215n4; homeschooling by, 6; on IRS not granting tax-exempt status to segregation academies, 59; Marshner’s visits to Mom’s groups, 51; on morality, 189–90; politicization of, 25, 67–68; “prosperity gospel” of, 12; regulations and population of, 149; resistant to civil rights movement, 68; for Trump, 14, 191; as a voting bloc, 24. See also fundamentalists, Christian Facebook, 146 Fairfax County, 146 Falwell, Jerry, 59, 66 Family Research Council, 69 family rights, 120 family vs. society, 25

farm subsidies, 29 Farris, Michael: on aims of homeschooling movement, 10, 17; Bachmann interview by, 157; CNP member, 103; CWA lawyer, 104; on goals of HSLDA, 9; on homeschool movement’s goal, 107; HSLDA founding member, 104, 106; on Huckabee’s campaign, 158; The Joshua Generation, 106–7; on Miller’s amendment to ESEA, 105; Moral Majority director in Washington State, 104; on Pence, 188; on public schools, 134; on regulation of homeschooling, 9, 17, 151; on religious liberty, House bill on, 134; on The 700 Club, 105; on Trump, 13, 187 Fayetteville Secular Homeschoolers, 114 federal educational savings account plan (529s), 192 federal housing policies, 31 Federalist Society, 15, 27 federal prescription drug benefit, 33 fetus, 32. See also unborn 5280 Patriots, 183 Finn, Chester, 78–79 First Amendment, 58, 61 Fleming, David, 86 Florida, 2, 10, 188 Focus on the Family radio program, 69 food stamps, 46 Fourteenth Amendment, 61 Fox News network, 15 Fox Piven, Frances, 230n56 Francis, Samuel, 107–8 freedom: coded terms for, 203t; communication strategies focused on, 136; distance learning programs and, 164; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 125, 126f, 128; issue framing on, 69, 91, 112, 118, 120–22, 121f, 124, 135; school choice policy designs on, 91 Freedom Council, 12 Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, 31 freedom policies: on abortion, 32; accountability and, 34, 38; on African Americans, opposing advances by, 29; agenda of, 28, 85; alignment with Republican Party, 38–39; background of development of, 24–28; charter school

239

INDEX

freedom policies: (continued ) policies as, 97; choice-based, 30–31, 33, 47; civil society from, 86–87, 90; concealment of beneficiaries of, 34; consequences of, 196; conservative agenda and, 47; definition of, 22; Democratic Party and, 29, 38–41, 39t, 47; deregulation through, 34; design of, 28–42, 39t, 46, 83, 87, 88t, 101; on education, 31; goals of, 31; government and, 31, 33–34, 86; on gun rights, 23, 32, 37–38, 191; on health care, 31, 32; on health insurance, 30–31; homeschool policies and, 23, 85–86; on housing, 31, 191; ideology of, 32; initial feelings when opting into, 86; institutions and, 33–41, 36f, 39t, 46, 86–87, 88t, 89–90; interest groups backing, 29–30, 42, 89, 118; interpretive effect of policy feedback, 37; layering of, 37; vs. liberal policies, 32, 41, 47; market-based, 30, 32–33; as negative, 30; NGOs and, 33, 34; outcomes of, 33, 37–38, 42, 89, 197; parallel politics creation by, 34–37, 41–42, 86, 90, 118, 190–91, 196; partisan support for, 38–41, 39t, 190; as “prize,” 42; vs. progressive policies, 41; on property rights, 32; proximity of, 46; and publiclyfunded vouchers, 30–31; on rank-and-file employees, opposing advances by, 29; as reactive, 30; Republican Party alignment with, 38–41, 39t; on retirement, 30–31; rights-based, 30, 32–33, 72; social sorting and, 190; social welfare state and, 29, 47; societal costs of, 34; status quo coalition on, 39–41, 39t; on taxes, 28, 191; Trump administration and design of, 189; on vaccinations, 30, 32; visibility of, 46, 89; voting for, 89; on women, opposing advances by, 29. See also “conscience rights”; homeschool policies; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback “free school” movement, 10 Friedman, Milton, 60 Friends of Chester Community Charter School, 144 Fuelner, Edward, 51 Fundamentalist Leewood FreeWill Baptist Church, 50 fundamentalists, Christian, 51, 67, 69–70, 215n4. See also evangelicals

Gaither, Milton, 55, 113, 155 gated communities: creation of, 35; families moving to, 14; government services relocated to, 4; homeschooling compared to, 161; policy feedback on, 23; status quo coalition on, 39t, 40 gender: communication strategies of interest groups on, 120; gender-reassignment surgeries, refusal to perform, 32; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 127; North on, of leaders in theocratic republic, 70; Republican Party ideology on, 25; social and political sorting according to sex and, 190; Trump supporters fear of societal changes related to, 13, 189, 191 General Social Survey (GSS), 167–68, 202 Generation Joshua, 10, 106–7, 157–58, 188 Georgia, 94, 98, 152 Gervais, Bryan, 181, 181t, 230n47 Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts, 188, 229n40 GI Bill, 47, 92 Gingrich, Newt, 72 Goldwater, Barry, 25, 68 Goss, Kristin, 86, 160–61, 228n27 government: Christian conservatives as victims of, 11, 60; communication strategies focused on, 136; conservatives on, 23, 134, 172, 173t; contacting officials in, 172, 173t, 174; freedom policies and, 31, 33–34, 86; homeschool movement on, 61, 134–35, 161, 172; lobbying strategies for, 133–34; North on Christianity and, 71; parallel politics to undermine secular, 23; Religious Right vs. secular, 10; Republican Party ideology on limited, 25; Rushdoony on, 65 Grace Baptist Church, 2 Graham, Billy, 58 Greenhouse magazine, 110 Greenhouse Report, 110 Green v. Connally, 59, 217n38 Grossmann, Matt, 38–39, 190 Growing Without Schooling (GWS) (Holt), 62–64, 69, 93, 107 Guilford County, 2 gun culture, 37 gun rights: ANES on, 168–69, 169t; communication strategies focused on,

240

INDEX

136; freedom policies on, 23, 32, 37–38, 191; homeschool movement on, 12, 69, 129; HSLDA on, 133; New Right on, 26; policy feedback on, 23, 37–38; political participation and lobbying for, 165–66; in Republican Party agenda, 28; shooting incidents and calls for limiting, 138; status quo coalition on, 39t, 41 guns, data and research on, 37–38 Hacker, Jacob, 36, 42 Hamerski, Kristin, 108 Haney-Lopez, Ian, 135–36 Harris, Andy, 192 Harris, Douglas, 8 Harris, Gregg, 103 Harris, Kamala, 195 Haywood Christian Homeschool Association, 2 Haywood County, 1, 3, 207n2 health care: Affordable Care Act (ACA), 31; “conscience rights” in, 189; Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act on, 31; freedom policies on, 31, 32; free public clinics for, 46; gender-reassignment surgeries, ability to refuse to perform, 32; homeschool movement on, 129; HSLDA on California bill on, 131; inside lobbying tactics for, 117; Rabushka on individuals providing for their own, 30; in Republican Party agenda, 26, 28 health insurance: ACA on, 31; Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act on, 31; freedom policies on, 30–31; for lowincome students and families, 46; redistributional social spending programs on, 46 Heartland Institute, 66 Henig, Jeffrey, 150–51 Heritage Foundation, 25, 27, 51, 68, 188 high school: objections to textbooks used in Kanawha, 49–52; Yoder v. Wisconsin on requiring children to attend, 61 high school diploma, 95, 97 Hirschman, Albert O., 161 Hispanic Americans, 193, 194, 205t Hoar, John, 51 Holt, John: anti-institutional vision of, 62; background of, 62; on certification

and advanced degrees for teachers, 63, 85; as founding father of homeschool movement, 64; Growing Without Schooling, 62–64, 69, 93, 107; on homebased pedagogy, 62, 64, 65; How Children Fail, 62; How Children Learn (Holt), 62; Instead of Education (Holt), 62; on legal acceptance of homeschooling, 62–63, 65, 72, 93; on lobby strategies for education policies, 63; network of non-Christian homeschoolers, 62, 64, 69, 79; on reforming public schools, 62; vs. Rushdoony, 65; on school board’s homeschool rulings, 63; on social and educational changes, 63–64; on unschooling, 63 Holyoke, Thomas, 149–50 homeowner associations, 35 “Homeschoolers for Bush,” 141 “Homeschoolers for Cruz,” 141 Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA): on abortion, 131; on assessment, 125–27; “Battle of House Resolution 6” by, 104–6; on birth place of children, 125; CAP of, 104–6; on child abuse, 112, 123; as a “Christian organization,” 112; Clark County Christian Homeschool Organization and, 183; communication strategies of, 119, 131, 136, 202–4; conservative movement and, 103, 111–12; conventions organized by, 104; vs. CRHE, 121; on euthanasia, 131; on federal educational savings account plans (529s), 192; financial support for, 109; formation of, 93, 103; friend of court brief in custody case, 122; Generation Joshua sponsored by, 10, 106–7, 157–58, 188; on government, 134–35; on guns, 133; on health care bill in California, 131; on House bill (HR610) for federal block grant program, 192; on infanticide, 131; issue framing by, 112, 121–23, 125–28, 126t, 126f, 127t; Klicka on, 102, 104–5, 109; on LGBTQ community, 132; lobbying by, 9, 104–6, 109, 117–18, 134; on marriage, 132; membership in, 109; mission of, 107, 127; New Right support of, 115; NHERI funding from, 106; on noneducational issues, 126t, 127t; on organizational issues,

241

INDEX

Home School Legal: (continued ) 126t; PAC, 106, 117; on parental rights, 122, 131–33; Patrick Henry College, 106; philanthropic foundation of, 106; as pillar of homeschool movement, 103, 193; political power of, 136; on presidential election, 131; public schools and, 111–12, 122–23; rankings of laws by, 151–52; on refusing medical treatment for children on religious grounds, 112; and secular homeschool students and families, 111–12; services provided by, 104, 109–10, 115–16; shaping of social identity by, 125, 128, 136; state and local organizations representing, 109–10; teachers’ unions and, 106, 134; on threats and attacks, 109, 122–23, 127, 135; in Trump transition team, 188; on 2008 elections, 131–32; on vaccination policies, 133; website for, 225n16 homeschool movement: advocacy strategy to protect, 138; on certification, 131; composition & size of local & state, 139–48; conservative agenda and, 11; counting organizations in, 142; on curriculum and instruction, 130f; on design of policies, 86, 88t, 89, 91–92; in election of Trump, 9, 12–13; on facilities and buildings, 130f, 131; Farris on goal of, 107; on financing and funding, 130f, 131; framing of issues by, 91, 117–24, 121f, 123t, 124t, 135; Francis on, 107–8; on government, 134–35, 161; Hirschman’s “exit, voice, loyalty” framework applied to, 161; Holt as founding father of, 64; informal organizations in, 145–48, 225n16; inside lobbying tactics for, 117; interviews with leaders of, 201–2; issue expansion by, 118, 129–33, 135; Klicka on, as warriors, 71; on legislative bills on “Conversion Therapy,” 133; libertarians in, 72, 79–80, 161–63; linguistic analysis of communications from, 180–82, 186; linguistic analysis of press releases from, 181t; on marriage, 132–33; on noneducational issues, 129–31, 130f; nonprofit organizations in, 142–46, 143t, 148, 225n12; opposing child welfare checks, 137–38; organizational ecology of, 139, 146–48, 184; in parallel politics, 14–17, 20, 54, 86, 139–40, 148, 159–60, 162, 172, 174, 196–97; pillars of, 103, 121; policy priorities

of, 92, 118; public schools and, 22–23, 77, 85, 164; as radical social movement, 157–58; Republican Party and, 10–15, 22, 54, 118, 167–68; on school vouchers, 77, 130f, 131; separatists in, 161; social media and, 146; on special education, 130f; on teacher issues, 130f, 131; on threats and attacks, 118, 121f, 122; in Trump election, 9, 12–13, 188; virtual organizations in, 143, 146, 148 homeschool policies: on accountability, 84t, 88t; adoption of, 93–97, 99t; on assessment, 4, 95–97, 127; on attendance, 95; on autonomy, 99, 140; on certification of teachers, 4, 63, 85; changing, 88t, 148–49, 151–52, 153f, 155–56; vs. charter school policies, 23, 77, 80–81, 84t, 100, 139–40, 196; child abuse and calls for restrictions in, 137–38; conservative movement and, 17, 22–23, 81, 167–68, 185; counter-mobilization against, 89; on curriculum and pedagogy, 84t, 85, 95–97; on data reporting requirements, 84t, 159, 174–75; democratic accountability and, 89; deregulation of, 152; design of, 84t, 85, 88t, 101, 147, 162; DeVos’ support of, 188; on diplomas, 97; disparate state and local environments for, 139–48; on educational portfolio, 152; enactment phase for, 148; evangelicals and, 149; on extracurricular activities, 95; freedom policies and, 23, 85–86; on funding and resources, 14, 67, 84t, 89–90, 192; on government, distrust of, 88t; identity and, 88t, 91; implementation of, 148–49; initial feelings when opting into, 86; institutions and, 36f, 81, 84t, 87, 88t, 89; on instructors and teachers, 4, 84t, 85, 95–97; on notification of intent, 95–96, 149, 152; on online participation, 95; outcomes of, 80, 89, 197; on participation and enrollment, 84t, 95; political participation and, 88t, 165–66; public image of, 116; vs. public school policies, 84t; ranking of, 151–52; resistance to, 88t, 89; vs. school voucher policies, 84t; on statements of faith, 112–13; states adopting, 93–95, 94f; on testing, 84t, 85, 95–97; on textbooks and instructions, 85; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 88t; third-party policies and, 161; as transformative, 22–23, 86;

242

INDEX

in United States, 93–97, 94f, 99t; on vaccinations, 96–97; visibility of, 88t, 89, 164 homeschool policy feedback: vs. charter school policy feedback, 23, 53–54, 80, 89–92, 152; in conservative political strategies, 17, 162; on cutting public expenditures, 17, 163; electoral representation from, 163; evidence for, 102, 116, 159–60; identity from, 162; among individuals, 166; interest group communication strategies in, 117–18; interpretive effects of, 89–90; negative, 161–63, 165; in political campaigns, 17, 162; positive, 16, 20, 88, 162; proximity of, 88t, 163–64; resource effects of, 88–90; salience of, 163–64; spillover effects of, 17, 162, 185 homeschools: “believers” vs. “inclusive,” 113; block grant program for, 192; civic infrastructure for, 53, 93; “closedcommunion” vs. “open-communion,” 113; in colonial America, 55; enrollment in, 5, 5f, 73, 204, 229n38; federal educational savings account plans (529s) for, 192–93; “free school” movement and, 10; as ideologically significant, 9–10; institutionalization of, 11–12, 108; Miller’s amendment to ESEA and, 104–6; National Household Survey on reasons for, 7–8; NHERI research on, 4–5; oversight of, 9, 29; “politically intolerant” alumni of, 167; popularity of, 230n55; privatization of education in, 161, 167; as religious schools, 94; status quo coalition on, 39t, 41 Homeschool Student Government Club, 108 homeschool students and families: against abortion, 12, 197; ANES on, 168–74, 169t, 170t; antigovernment contagion from, 163; charitable donations from, 172–74, 173t; Christian, self-identification as, 6; civil society for, 2, 14–15, 86, 88t, 146; collective action by, 148; community engagement by, 172, 173t, 174; vs. conservatives, 172–74, 174t, 185–86; in consumer protests, 172–73, 173t; as consumers, 16, 75, 91; contacting officials in government, 172, 173t, 174; counting, 4, 175; in Cruz presidential campaign, 141; demographics of, 6–7, 7t, 193; demographics of public school

students and, 166; design of policies and, 147; diversity of, 6, 193; on government, 172, 173t; in GWB presidential campaigns, 141; identifying with commitment to home school, 6; identity of, 80, 87, 136; isolation of, 1, 166–67; Kanawha County textbook protests and, 52; lobbying by, 9, 22, 102, 118, 133–35; membership in organizations, 172, 173t; mentality fostered by, 16; needs of, 88; in parallel politics, 172; political attitudes and behaviors of, 159, 166–74; in political campaigns, 17, 162, 165, 167, 174, 196–97; political participation by, 10, 17, 88t, 106–7, 111, 113–14, 116, 141–42, 157–59, 162, 165–67, 174, 188, 196–97; protests, participation in, 172, 173t; socialization of, 166–67, 229n33; Tea Party and, 13, 15, 20, 159, 179–80, 182–84, 183t, 186, 197; Tea Party support by, 180; volunteering by, 173–74, 173t; on voting, 173, 173t. See also homeschool movement homosexuality, 11, 133. See also LGBTQ community Hoover Institution, 30 Hopkins, David, 38–39, 195 Horan, Marvin, 50 House Tea Party Caucus, 158 housing: freedom policies on, 31, 191; Rabushka on individuals providing for their own, 30; redistributional social spending programs on, 46; in Republican Party agenda, 28; Section 8 vouchers, loan programs, and rental assistance for, 31, 39t, 40; Title I construction and operation of, 31; vouchers for, 36f How Children Fail (Holt), 62 How Children Learn (Holt), 62 Huckabee, Mike, 12, 158, 209n39 humanism, 17, 70 Hunt, Nelson Baker, 66 Huseman, Jessica, 102 Idaho, 95 identity: abortion policies and social, 136; charter school policies and, 88t, 91; homeschool policies and, 88t, 91; from homeschool policy feedback, 162; of homeschool students and families, 80, 87, 136; HSLDA shaping social, 125, 128, 136; inside institutions, 90; interest groups

243

INDEX

identity: (continued ) on policy beneficiaries, 118; interpretive effect of policy feedback and, 44–45, 85, 87, 90, 117; interpretive effects and, 44–45, 85, 87, 90, 117; NRA shaping gun owner’s, 37; outside lobbying tactics and, 117–18; partisanship, religion, and, 191; from policy feedback, 162; of policy supporters, 38, 118; political, 23, 87; religious values and, 91; school choice policy designs and, 91–92; shaping of, by new conservative institutions, 87; social, new policies and, 42; voting and, 190 Illinois Christian Home Educators, 141 immigration, 15, 56, 107–8, 189, 191 immunizations, 127. See also vaccinations Indiana, 152 individualism, 25 individual retirement accounts (IRAs), 33–34, 36, 36f, 39, 39t, 46 individuals, problems adhering to, 86 infanticide, 131 Ingersoll, Julie, 66 Ingram, Helen, 86, 160–61, 228n27 inside lobbying tactics, 117, 135 Instead of Education (Holt), 62 Institute for Christian Economics, 70 institutional strategies, 11–12, 20 institutions: charter school policies and, 36f, 83, 88t, 91, 100; conservatives undermining existing political, 23; creation of, 43; definition of, 43; “devaluing” public, 161; freedom policies and, 33–41, 36f, 39t, 46, 86–87, 88t, 89–90; homeschool policies and, 36f, 81, 84t, 87, 88t, 89; identity inside, 90; liberal and progressive policies and, 41; policies from, 43; school choice policies and, 82–85, 91–93; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 33–46, 36f, 86–87, 88t, 89–90 interest groups: charter school policy design and, 88t, 91–92; communication strategies of, 117–24, 202–3, 203t; framing of issues by, 118–26, 121f, 123t, 124t, 135, 224n10; freedom policies supported by, 29–30, 42, 89, 118; goals and capabilities of, new policies and, 42; homeschool policy design and, 86, 88t, 89, 91–92; homeschool students and families in, 80, 93, 193; on identity of policy beneficiaries, 118;

interpretive effects in communications of, 117–18; issue expansion by, 128–33, 135; lobbying tactics of, 117–18; on noneducational issues, 123t, 124t, 129–31, 130f; policies as “prize” of, 42; press releases on organizational issues, 123t; public policies and the formation of, 136; representing teachers, 83; in Republican Party, 25–26; on retirement, 39; school choice policies and, 91, 117–24, 121f, 123t, 124t; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 43–45, 117–18, 136 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 11, 59, 66, 142, 225n12 interpretive effects: description of, 44–45; for gun owners, 37; of homeschool policy feedback, 89–90; hostile view of government as, 86; identity and, 44–45, 85, 87, 90, 117; for ideology and partisanship, 87, 89; in interest group communications, 117–18; in lobbying tactics, 117, 203; meaning from, 117; negative interpretive effects, 45–46; positive interpretive effects, 89–90; of pre-K policy, 44; for public schools, 83; vs. resource effects, 85; of school choice policies, 91; self-efficacy from, 117 Iowa, 132, 152, 158, 192, 209n39 issue expansion, 118, 128–33 Jesus Christ, 17, 65 John Birch Society, 12, 51 Joshua Generation, The (Farris), 106–7 Joslyn, Mark, 37 judiciary, 131, 134 Kanawha County, 49–52, 61, 194, 215n1 Kansas, 152 Kennedy, John F., 58 King, Ken, 138 King, Steve, 192 King County, 176 “Kingston Group,” 25 Klicka, Christopher, 71, 102, 104–5, 109, 157 Koch brothers, 15 Kolderie, Ted, 77–79, 83 Ku Klux Klan, 51 Lacombe, Matthew, 224n4 LaHaye, Beverly, 103

244

INDEX

LaHaye, Tim, 10, 66, 103 Lambert, Tim, 137–38 Larsen, Matthew, 8 layering strategy, 37 League of Women Voters, 154–55 Learning Tree, The (Parks), 104 legal movement, conservative: advice from, 143; American Legislative Exchange Council in, 14–15, 17, 25, 27, 31, 185; Federalist Society developed, 15; Heartland Institute in, 66; in homeschool cases, 66; lobbying by, 66; North on, 10, 71; at Oral Roberts University, 157; Rushdoony in, 66–67, 93. See also Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) Lerman, Amy, 46–47 LGBTQ community: ANES on relationships in, 169, 169t; conservative agenda on, 189; CWA’s opposition to rights of, 129; Democratic Party policies and, 38–39; expansion of rights for, 72; freedom policies on rights of businesses to refuse service to, 32; HSLDA on, 132. See also same-sex marriage liberalism, 119 liberal policies, 32, 41–42, 47 libertarianism, 10–11, 25, 39, 65, 69 libertarians: on charter schools, 77; in conservative movement, 119; on data collection by public authorities, 174; in homeschool movement, 72, 79–80, 161–63; North on decentralized structure of fundamentalist Christian churches as political asset for, 69–70; parallel politics and, 17; Religious Right and, 10–11; on school vouchers, 40, 77; Tea Party ideology, political tactics, and, 180 liberty: communication strategies focused on, 135–36; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 125, 126t, 126f, 127t, 128; issue framing on, 91, 119–22, 121f, 123t, 124, 124t. See also religious liberty “Liberty Court,” 25 library, homeschool learning materials at, 3, 165 licenses, occupational, 34, 39t, 41 Lighthouse Christian Homeschool Association, 142 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), 180–81, 230n46

Littleton Tea Party, 183 Louisiana, 8, 94, 122 low-income students and families, 6, 40, 46 magnet schools, 13, 82–83, 97 Maine, 125–27, 152 Mann, Horace, 55–56 Manna, Paul, 150 markets: charter school policy design and, 91; coded terms for, 203t; conservative ideology on, 10, 17; education reforms based on, 60, 80–81; freedom policies on, 30, 32–33; for homeschool curricula, 11, 16, 88, 148; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 126f, 127; issue framing on, 91, 121f, 122, 124, 135; the New Right on, 25; occupational licenses and open labor, 41; reducing failures, as policy goal, 46; Religious Right’s ideologies and, 10–11; Republican Party on, 25, 29; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback on, 30, 32–33 marriage, 129, 132, 136, 187, 190. See also same-sex marriage Marshner, Connie, 51, 53, 66, 68 Maryland, 152, 192 Mason, Lilliana, 190 Massachusetts, 55–56, 98, 125, 152, 165 McCain, John, 14, 170, 170t, 190–91 McKenna, James, 51 McVeigh, Rory, 206 McVicar, Michael, 66, 70 Meadows, Mark, 179 means-tested programs, 43, 44 Mecklenburg County, 2 Medical Modernization Act, 38 Medicare, 38 Meese, Edwin, 66 Mennonite, 61 mental health problems, children with, 8 Merriman, Ben, 32 Mettler, Suzanne, 162 Michener, Jamila, 38 Michigan, 95, 98, 100, 152, 178 Midway Elementary School, bombing of, 50 Mile Hi Patriots, 183 militias, private, 14, 17 Miller, George, 104–5 Minnesota, 13, 77–78, 97, 152, 157–58, 179 Minutemen Project, 14

245

INDEX

Miron, Gary, 151 Mississippi, 59, 93, 152 Missouri, 10, 179, 188 Moe, Terry, 150 Montana, 84, 94 Montgomery County, 146 Mooney, Alex, 179 Moore, Alice, 49–50, 52, 53 Moore, Raymond and Dorothy, 69, 111 morality-based policies, 72 Moral Majority, 12, 68, 73 moral relativism, 112 Morley, Sandy, 165 Morris, Irwin, 181, 181t, 230n47 Movement Conservatives, 54 National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), 119, 204 National Alliance of Secular Homeschoolers, 112, 193 National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), 118, 122, 204 National Center for Educational Statistics, 7t National Center for Home Education, 104 National Commission on Excellence in Education report, 75, 97 National Education Association, 187–88 National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), 4–5, 103, 106, 166–67 National Household Survey, 7 National Review, 85 National Rifle Association (NRA), 12, 37–38, 224n4 National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), 129 National Right to Work Committee (NRWC), 74–75 Nation at Risk, A (National Commission on Excellence in Education), 75, 97 Nebraska, 179 negative freedom, 30 negative interpretive effects, 45–46 negative policy feedback: categorizing by, 45–46, 85; effects of, 43, 86, 89; on homeschooling, 161–63, 165; policy design determining, 46; reduced, on gun violence, 38; during service switch from government to nongovernmental contractors, 160; on social welfare state, 46 negative resource effects, 89

New Deal, 24, 134 New Hampshire, 3, 122, 152 New Jersey, 132 New Left, 29 New Mexico, 98 New Orleans, 8, 122 New Right: as an “anchoring group,” 25; birthplace of, 194; on Christian conservatives as victims, 11; DeVos’ support of, 188; disability rights movement and, 29; fundraising by, 25, 68, 72; HSLDA support from, 115; influence of, 74; on IRS not granting tax-exempt status to segregated private schools, 59–60; “Kingston Group” and “Liberty Court” meetings organized by, 25; marketbased ideologies of, 25; on political power of Christians, 72; on racial dimensions of social issues, 11; in Republican Party, 25, 72; on society vs. family, 25; strategy of, 68, 72; use of abortion for political gains, 59; voter mobilization by, 25 New York State, 58, 95 New York Times, 52, 69, 158, 195 Nielsen, Bart, 109, 223n21 Nixon, Richard, 25, 59–60 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 33, 34 nontraditional approach to child’s education, 8 Norquist, Grover, 12 North, Gary: background of, 10, 69; on Christian conservative political strategy, 17; on creation of theocratic republic in United States, 70; on decentralized structure of fundamentalist Christian churches, 69–70; on divine positive policy feedback, 70; on home-based education, 69–71, 85, 196; HSLDA and, 111; intellectual framework for Christiancentered reformation of society from, 71; on morality, freedom, and liberty, 69–71; on public education, 70; on religious liberty doctrine, 10, 71; on religious texts, prayer, and teachings, 85; Rushdoony and, 69, 71–72; as the “Tea Party economist,” 179; Tyler Group’s libertarian intellectuals and, 69 North Carolina: Alamance County, 164; ARCH in, 114; Central Elementary

246

INDEX

School, 1; charter school policies in, 99t; Guilford County, 2; Haywood County, 1, 3, 207n2; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschool informal organizations in, 146, 147t; homeschool policies in, 94, 99t, 147, 201; homeschool students in, 1–2, 164, 207n2; jobs in, 195; legislative page program in, 111; libraries, homeschool learning materials at, 3; Lighthouse Christian Homeschool Association, 142; Meadows representing, 179; Mecklenburg County, 2; NCHE in, 2, 110–11; Onslow Secular Homeschoolers, 114; public schools in, 1, 195; Wake County, 2, 146 North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE), 2, 110–11 North Dakota, 152 Not in My Backyard (NIMBY), 45 Obama, Barack, 158–59, 195 Obamacare, 31 O’Brien Gonzalez, Benjamin, 175 Ohio, 10, 123, 125, 162 Oklahoma, 157, 194 Onslow Secular Homeschoolers, 114 Open Schools movement, 97 Oral Roberts University, 157 Oregon, 2, 155 outside lobbying tactics, 117–18, 133, 135, 203 parallelism, 14, 15, 213n43 parallel politics: accountability and, 23; charter school groups in, 139; of conservative movement, 16–17, 23, 54; and Democratic Party power, 23; freedom policies creation of, 34–37, 41–42, 86, 90, 118, 190–91, 196; homeschool movement in, 14–17, 20, 54, 86, 139–40, 148, 159–60, 162, 172, 174, 196–97; libertarians and, 17; policy feedback and, 16–17; social welfare state and, 23; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 18, 118; Trump administration policies and, 189; voting and, 179 parental rights: communication strategies focused on, 136; CRHE on, 122; distance learning programs and, 164; HSLDA on, 122, 131–33; issue framing on, 120–21; LaHayes as advocates for, 103; New Right

on, 26; as pillar of homeschool movement, 121; Rushdoony’s views on, 67; Yoder v. Wisconsin on, 61 parents: as consumers, 75, 91; convicted of crimes, 96; education level of, 6, 7t, 95, 97 Parks, Gordon, 104 parochial schools, 53. See also Catholic schools party politics, 14 Patashnik, Eric, 148 Patrick Henry College, 106 Paul, Ron, 10, 69, 184 pedagogy: Bible-centered, 10; Holt on, 62, 64; parental instruction in, 88; policies on, 84t; Rushdoony and home-based, 65 Pence, Mike, 188 Pend Orielle County, 176 Pennsylvania: charter school policies in, 99t; Friends of Chester Community Charter School, 144; Generation Joshua for Republican candidates in, 10, 188; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschool informal organizations in, 146, 147t; homeschool policies in, 95–96, 99t, 100, 147, 201, 221n25; HSLDA ranking of homeschool policies in, 152; Montgomery County, 146 Philips, Kevin, 25 Phillips, Howard, 66–67 Phillips County, 176 Pierson, Paul, 37, 42, 44 pluralism, 65 pluralistic mentality, 16 Poley, April, 184 police, Crane’s allegations of brutality against protesters, 51 policy feedback: from attitudes and behaviors of homeschoolers, 171, 174; in “building and distributing civic skills,” 162; causality in research on, 175; design of policies and, 82–83, 101; on gun rights, 23, 37–38; Holt on social and educational changes from, 63–64; identity from, 162; intentional use of, 54; Movement Conservatives use of, to shape politics, 54; North on, 69–70; parallel politics and, 16–17; proximity of public policy and, 163–64; on public schools, 82, 163; resource effects, 44–46, 85–90; salience of public policy and, 163–64; on school choice, 82, 91; selection bias in research on, 175; from third-party

247

INDEX

policy feedback: (continued ) policies, 228n27; as transformative, 189; voting and, 179. See also interpretive effects; negative policy feedback; positive policy feedback; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback policy making, parallelism in, 14–15 Policy Review, 72 political action committee (PAC), HSLDA, 106, 117 political campaigns: antigovernment contagion and, 163; competitive, 229n40; Generation Joshua activities in, 10, 106–7, 157–58, 188; homeschool students and families in, 10, 17, 106–7, 157–58, 162, 165, 167, 174, 188, 196–97; inside lobbying tactics in, 117; North on launching, 70; online civics curriculum based on, 141; Practical Homeschooling on participation in, 108; secular language of, conservative’s adoption of, 119; Young on NCHE’s involvement in, 110. See also individual candidates political efficacy, 44, 47, 87, 90, 145 political participation: antigovernment contagion undermining, 163; by charter school groups, 161–62; by charter school parents, 161; economic factors affecting, 229n40; by Generation Joshua, 10, 106–7, 157–58, 188; gun rights, lobbying for, 165– 66; by homeschool students and families, 10, 17, 88t, 106–7, 111, 113–14, 116, 141, 157–59, 162, 165–67, 174, 188, 196–97; increasing, 177; lobbying and, 116; policy feedback and, 47, 88t; Practical Homeschooling on, 107–9; by private school students and families, 86, 161; by public school students and families, 161, 165, 167; by religious school students and families, 86; resource effects of policies on, 44; school vouchers and, 86; by secular homeschool organizations, 111, 113–14; spillover effects and, 90; theory of conservative freedom policy feedback and, 47, 88t; Young on NCHE’s encouragement of, 110–11 political power: of HSLDA, 136; New Right on Christian, 72; vs. political efficacy, 47; Republican Party’s policies and, 23; of status quo supporters, 35–37, 39; of white communities, 60

poor, 31. See also low-income students and families pornography, 11, 72 positive interpretive effects, 89–90 positive policy feedback: from attitudes and behaviors of homeschoolers, 174; categorizing by, 45–46, 85; for charter schools, 54; effects of, 85–86; Farris on, 107; from freedom policies, 87; on Holt’s social and educational changes, 64; on homeschooling, 16, 20, 88, 107, 162, 165; North on divine, 70; policy design determining, 46; prevalence of local & state organizations in, 140; from public school policies, 163; on public schools, 163; on Social Security, 36; on social welfare state, 46; on subsidizing prekindergarten education, 42–44; Trump translating, 191 positive resource effects, 45–46, 86–88, 90 positive rights, state-guaranteed, 32 postmillennialism, 66 Practical Homeschooling (Pride), 89, 107–9, 115 prekindergarten education, subsidizing, 42–44 prescription drugs, 38, 39t, 40 presidential elections: ANES on, 168, 170–71, 170t; data on voter turnout for, 186, 204–5, 205t; Eaton civics curriculum on, 141; economic factors affecting, 229n40; GOTV efforts during, 229n40; homeschool enrollment and voting patterns in, 176–77, 178t; Republican Party ideology and lost, 25, 68. See also individual candidates Pride, Mary, Practical Homeschooling, 89, 107–9, 115 privacy rights, 120 Private & Home Educators of California, 131 private schools: ANES on, 168; consequence of removing children from, 63; curriculum for, 84; enrollment in, 5, 57; federal educational savings account plans (529s) for, 192; Green v. Connally class-action suit on, 59; growth of homeschools at the expense of, 77; Hirschman’s “exit, voice, loyalty” framework applied to, 161; homeschools as, 53, 94; Mann on, 55–56; Miller’s amendment to ESEA and, 105; personnel and teachers in, 84; political participation by students and families in, 86, 161; Reagan administration’s

248

INDEX

proposals on, 79; restrictions on use of vouchers by, 40; school vouchers for, 60, 83–85; state and local education policies including, 58; tax-exempt requests from segregated, 59; testing in, 84; Trump on civil rights and, 13; tuition tax credits for, 79, 84; vaccination requirements for, 97; volunteerism by students and families in, 86; vouchers for, 60, 83–85; in West Virginia, education requirements met by, 53 progressive policies, 41, 42, 72 Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), 77 property rights, 25, 32, 69, 136 property taxes, 14, 56–57, 82 ProPublica, 225n12 “prosperity gospel,” evangelical, 12 proximity, policy, 45–46, 88t, 163–64, 176–79, 178t public policies: ANES on, 168; bipartisan consensus on, after Second World War, 24; consequences of, 196; development of, 128; enactment phase for, 148; evangelicals use of, to mobilize conservatives, 24, 60; interest groups formed because of, 136; postenactment phase of, 149; as “prize” of interest groups, 42; proximity to, 163; Rabushka on alternatives to, 30; salience of, 163; as secular threat to religious values, 108, 119. See also education policies; freedom policies; liberal policies; progressive policies public schools: access to buildings, 58, 131, 140; accountability for, 40, 82–83, 84t; ANES on, 168–70, 169t; bombing of, in Kanawha County, 50–52; civil rights movement and, 56; closing of, 165; competition between, 75; compulsory attendance laws for, 53; consequence of removing children from, 63; conservative cuts in expenditures on, 17; data reporting requirements for, 83, 84t; Democratic Party on, 194–95; demographics of students and families, 166; desegregation of, 11, 55, 57–59; design of, 82; discrimination in, federal protections against, 57; enrollment in, 84t, 205t; Farris on, 134; federal educational savings account plans (529s) for, 192; funding and resources for, 82–83, 84t; geographical inequities and social

problems in, 74; Graham on Bible reading and prayer in, 58; growth of homeschools at the expense of, 77; Holt on reforming, 62; homeschool movement and, 22–23, 77, 85, 164; HSLDA and, 111–12, 122–23; interpretive effects for, 83; magnet, 13, 82–83, 97; Mann on free, 55–56; A Nation at Risk report on, 75; North’s opposition to, 70; oversight of, 57, 82–83; participation in, 84t; personnel and teachers in, 82–83, 84t; policies on, 58, 82–83, 84t, 97, 142, 163; policy feedback on, 82, 163; political participation by parents, 161, 165, 167; political proselytism in, 56; prayer in, 11, 58, 72, 119; proximity of homeschooling and, 164; Reconstruction-era laws on education of African Americans in, 56; religion in, 57–58; Republican Party on, 195; Rushdoony on, 65; school vouchers for, 40; sex education in, 11; solidarity with other, 83; standardized approach to education in, 74; standards-and-excellence plans for, 78; student achievement in, 83; testing in, 75, 82–83, 84t, 85; textbooks for, objections to, 49–52; universal access to, 58; vaccination requirements for, 41, 97; values and, 7, 58, 65; virtual (online) school programs and, 160; voucher use restricted to, 40; Yoder v. Wisconsin on, 61. See also charter schools; school boards quality of teaching, 105 Rabushka, Alvin, 30 race: of charter school students and families, 6–8, 7t; coded terms for, 203t; communication strategies of interest groups on, 120; conservatives coded language on, 136; Francis on culture wars of, 108; of homeschool students and families, 6, 7t, 136, 193; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 127; Kanawha County’s textbook protests and, 49; New Right’s policy entrepreneurs on social issues and, 11; Republican Party ideology on, 25; social and political sorting according to, 190; Trump supporters fear of societal changes related to, 13; voting and, 177, 229n40 racism, 189

249

INDEX

radio, Focus on the Family program on, 69 Radtke, Jamie, 182 RAND Corporation, 27 Ray, Brian, 4, 103, 166–67 Reactionary Republicanism (Gervaise & Morris), 230n47 Reader’s Digest, 75 Reagan, Ronald, 26 Reagan administration, 3, 59, 66–68, 75, 78–79 recreational activities, 30, 142 redistributional social spending programs, policies of, 46 Reed, Ralph, 72–73, 129 Reitz, Michael, 108 religion: of charter school students and families, 6; “conscience rights” based on, 32; freedom policies on, 32; of homeschool students and families, 6; identity, partisanship, and, 191; New Right on faith vs. secular values, 25; parental beliefs on, 52; in public schools, 57–58; social and political sorting according to, 190; teaching of morals and, 7; Yoder v. Wisconsin on education and, 61 religious communities, secluded, 14 religious liberty: DeVos’ support of, 188; Farris on 1999 House bill on, 134; New Right on defense of, 26; North on, 10, 71; as pillar of homeschool movement, 121; school choice policies and, 91; Trump on, Farris on, 187 Religious Right, 10–11, 20, 68, 190 religious rights, 120 religious schools: Catholic, 86; denominational disputes between, 55; federal control over, 105; history of, in the United States, 55; homeschools as, 94; Mann on, 55–56; parochial, 53; political participation by students and families in, 86; school vouchers for, 84; Trump on civil rights and, 13; volunteerism by students and families in, 86. See also Christian schools religious values: court rulings undermining, 58, 64; Farris on homeschooling and, 106; identity and, 91; issue framing on, 24–26, 112; Moores on home education and, 69; New Right on homeschooling and, 72; Rushdoony on public schools and, 65; school choice policies and, 91; vs. secular, 25; strategic reframing of, 24; Yoder v. Wisconsin on, 61

Republican Party: after Second World War, 24; ANES on, 168, 169t, 170–71, 170t; on capitalism, 25; charter schools, support for, 79, 80; civil rights movement and, 24; on Common Core curriculum, 15; communications, style and tone of, 180–81; conservative homeschool movement supporting, 10–15, 118; conservatives on, 54; on consumers, 26; data on voter turnout for presidential elections, 205; direct-mail fundraising by, 68; disproportionality in policy participation in, 38; on education policies, 28, 195; effect of parallel policies of, 23; evangelical’s alliance with, 189–90; on federal expenditures, 29; freedom policies alignment with, 38–41, 39t; GOTV efforts of, 229n40; gun rights in agenda of, 28; health care in agenda of, 26, 28; homeschool movement and, 10–15, 22, 54, 118, 167–68; ideologies of, 25, 39, 72; interest groups in, 25–26; language of platform, 26, 27f; on legal immigration, 15; on markets, 25, 29; on Medical Modernization Act, 38; New Right in, 25, 72; on occupational licenses, 41; platform on homeschooling, 79; policies within agenda of, 29; on public schools, 195; Religious Right in, 68; on school choice, 3, 195; on school vouchers, 39, 192; on standards-and-excellence plans for educational reform, 78; Tea Party’s parallel politics to, 15; on trade and international agreements, 15 resource effects, 44–46, 85–90 retirement: freedom policies on, 30–31; individual retirement accounts, 33–34, 36, 36f, 39, 39t, 46; interest groups on, 39; privatizing, 36; public spending on, 46; in Republican Party agenda, 28; Social Security for, 23, 36–37, 92, 170 Rhode Island, 94 Rhodes, Jesse, 79 rights: children’s, 122; coded terms for, 203t; communication strategies focused on, 120, 136; “conscience,” 32, 189; distance learning programs and, 164; freedom policies based on, 30, 32–33, 72; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 125, 126t, 126f, 127t; issue framing on, 92, 118–22, 121f, 123t, 124, 124t, 135; property, 25, 32, 69, 136; religious, 120;

250

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theory of conservative freedom policy feedback based on, 30, 32–33; worker’s, 29, 32, 189, 194. See also gun rights; parental rights Robin, Corey, 29 Robinson, Carin, 73, 119 Roe v. Wade, 10 Rohlinger, Deanna, 129 “Role of Government in Education, The” (Friedman), 60 Romney, Mitt, 14, 170t, 171, 191 Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum, 10, 71 Rotary Club, 111 rural areas, 7, 7t, 14, 39 Rushdoony, Rousas “R. J.”: background of, 64–65; Chalcedon Foundation of, 65–66, 93; on Christian families and homebased education, 65, 79–80, 85, 196; CNP founded by, 66–67, 103; in conservative legal movement, 66–67; on giving Department of Education authority over Christian schools, 67; homeschool legal strategies from, 93; HSLDA and, 111; intellectual framework for Christiancentered reformation of society from, 71; McVicar’s biography of, 66; New Right founded by, 68; North and, 69, 71–72; in Religious Right’s homeschool ideological project, 10; on religious texts, prayer, and teachings, 85 Rutherford Institute, 93 Ryan, Paul, 158

homeschool rulings by, 63; Kanawha’s objections to high school textbooks, 49–52; local elections for, 57, 162; president of, decision to homeschool her children, 3; on private school operations, 84. See also school districts school choice: conservative movement on, 54; Democratic Party on, 39–40, 194–95; DeVos’ support of, 3, 188; and diversification, 78; Hirschman’s “exit, voice, loyalty” framework applied to, 161; Kolderie on, 77–78; policy feedback on, 82, 91–92; Republican Party on, 3, 195; Trump on, 13 school choice policies: in Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, 77; bipartisan consensus on, 194; communication strategies of interest groups on, 91, 117–24, 121f, 123t, 124t; design of, 82–85, 90–92, 149; identity and design of, 91–92; implementation of, 92, 139–40; inside lobbying tactics for, 117; institutions and, 82–85, 91–93; intended interpretive effects of, 91; on neighborhood boundaries for enrollment, 82; parents as education customers in, 91; political coalitions backing, 77; Reagan administration politics creating, 3; vs. Social Security, 92; Trump on, 191. See also charter school policies; homeschool policies school districts: academic progress by homeschool student evaluated by, 96; Budde on reorganizing, 76; charters granted by, 99; choice and diversification placing competitive pressure on, 78; funding for charter schools controlled by, 99; homeschool policies preventing intervention by, 137; Kolderie on monopoly on education policy by, 78; neighborhood boundaries for enrollment within, 82; notification that student will not attend assigned public school, 95; testing by, 127. See also school boards school prayer, 11, 58, 72, 119 school vouchers: accountability for, 84t; block grant program for, 192; charter school groups on, 130f, 131; civil rights movement on, 40; connection to governmental institutions, 84t; curriculum and pedagogy policies for, 84, 84t; data reporting

salience, policy, 163, 176–79, 178t same-sex marriage: ANES on, 169, 169t; conservatives on, 11, 190; Farris on homeschoolers stopping, 10; freedom policies on, 32; homeschool students and families opposing, 197; HSLDA on, 132 Sanders, Bernie, 193 Sasse, Ben, 179 Schlafly, Phyllis, 141 Schneider, Anne, 86, 160–61, 228n27 Schneider, Mark, 8, 145 school-age population, 177, 229n40 school boards: African Americans on, 60; Budde on charter school formation by, 76; central decision making by, 82; charter school authorization by, 98; Christian Coalition on elections for, 73; Holt on

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school vouchers: (continued ) requirements for, 84t; Democratic Party on, 39–40; design of, 83–85, 84t; in education policies, 2; enrollment in, 84t; funding and resources for, 83–85, 84t; for homeschooling, 67; homeschool movement on, 77, 130f, 131; House bill (HR610) on federal, 192; libertarians on, 40, 77; in Montana, 84; participation and enrollment policies for, 84t; personnel and teacher employment policies for, 84, 84t; political participation and, 86; for private schools, 60, 83–85; for public schools, 40; Republican Party on, 39, 192; restrictions on use of, 40; Rushdoony on publicly funded, 67; segregationist’s use of, 84; status quo coalition on, 39t; tax credits for, 84; testing policies for, 84, 84t; volunteerism and, 86; in Wisconsin, 83–84 Schram, Sanford, 20, 45, 163 science and technology, 170 Searcy County, 176 secular homeschooling: Clarksons on, 108; commitment to, 6; for gifted children, 113; Growing Without Schooling on, 62–64, 69, 93, 107; HSLDA and, 111–12; minorities in, 113; organizations forming to support, 112–14; political participation by students and families in, 111, 113–14; for special needs children, 113; website for, 225n16 secularism, 13, 61–62, 65, 72 secular values vs. religious faith, 25 security: coded terms for, 203t; HSLDA use of, in emails vs. press releases, 126t, 126f, 127, 127t, 135; IRAs as alternative path to retirement, 36; issue framing on, 119–20, 121f, 122–23, 123t, 124t security forces, 14, 17, 35 segregation academies, 59 segregationist policies, 32 “selective benefits,” 104 self-efficacy, 117. See also political efficacy Seliger, Kel, 138 separatists, 161 700 Club, The (television program), 105 sex, 190. See also gender; same-sex marriage sex education, 11 sexism, 189 sexuality, 25. See also homosexuality Shanker, Albert, 75–77, 79, 83

Shober, Paul, 150 Sikkink, David, 167 Skocpol, Theda, 42, 180 Smith, Christian, 167 Smith, Michael, 104 social justice, 154–55 social policies, 12 Social Security, 23, 36–37, 92, 170 social welfare programs, local, 70 social welfare state, 23, 29, 46–47, 65, 86, 160–61 society, New Right on family vs., 25 socioeconomic factors, 7, 86–87. See also economic class Soss, Joe, 20, 45, 162, 163 Soul on Ice (Cleaver), 49 South Carolina, 59, 188 special education, 83, 130f special needs, children with, 8, 110, 113 spillover effects: of homeschool policy feedback, 17, 162, 185; political participation and, 90; of theory of conservative freedom policy feedback, 44, 90, 174, 179; voting and, 90, 179 Stand Your Ground, 37 statements of faith, 112–13 State Policy Network, 27 statism, 72 statists, 67 Stevens, Mitchell, 113 Stone, Deborah, 119–20 Stone County, 176 subsidies, 29, 31 suburban communities, 7, 7t, 14, 195 Suiter, Phil, 52–53 Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education, 57, 84; Engel v. Vitale, 58; Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, 84; Holt on school board homeschool rulings and, 63; Roe v. Wade, 10; Yoder v. Wisconsin, 61, 217n45 Sureau, John, 164, 166 Tam Cho, Wendy K., 184 tax credits, 79, 84, 131 taxes: conservative movement on, 191; on federal educational savings account plans (529s), 192; freedom policies on, 28, 191; for homeschools, 14, 67, 89–90; property, 14, 56–57, 82; Rushdoony on income from,

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67; tuition tax credits for private schools, 79; visibility of policies and provisions in code, 45 teachers’ unions: charter school policies and, 75–77, 83, 149–50; Democratic Party on, 194; Farris on, 134; HSLDA and, 106, 134; Lambert and, 138; magnet schools and, 83; vs. NRWC, 75; Shanker on charter schools and, 76–77; as status quo defenders, 40, 74; teachers as victims of, 75; Trump election and strikes by, 194 Teaching Home, The (Welch), 103, 107, 109 Tea Party: activism, county data on, 160; ANES on, 180; Bachmann as voice of, 158, 179; Christian conservatives and, 180; on Common Core curriculum, 15; communications, style and tone of, 180–82, 181t, 186; data on, 206; homeschool students and families and, 13, 15, 20, 159, 179–80, 182–84, 183t, 186, 197; on immigration, 15; libertarians and, 180; parallelism in actions of, 15; parallel politics of, 15; popularity of, 230n55; Rally for the Republic, 184; on trade and international agreements, 15 Tea Party Patriots, 183–84, 183t technology, inside lobbying tactics for, 117 Teles, Steven, 15 Teske, Paul, 8 testing: bipartisan consensus on, 75; charter school policies on, 84t, 150; in charter schools, 78, 83, 85; Democratic Party on, 195; homeschool policies on, 84t, 85, 95–97; in magnet schools, 83; in private schools, 84; in public schools, 75, 82–83, 84t, 85; by school districts, 127; school voucher policies on, 84, 84t Texas: homeschools as private schools in, 4; Republican Party ideological variation in, 225n5 Texas Homeshool Coalition, 138 textbooks, 16, 49–51, 85, 88, 140 thehomeschoolmom.com, 225n16 Thelen, Kathleen, 37 theory of conservative freedom policy feedback: acquiring and sustaining power through, 28; bipartisan consensus and, 38; charter school policy design and, 88t; choice-based policies in, 30–31, 33; composition & size of local & state

organizations and, 139–40, 148, 152, 155, 156; criminal justice policies and, 46–47; definition of, 22, 42; democracy and, 43; design of policies and, 85–87, 88t, 89–92, 101; discussion on, 42–47; expectations about effects from, 85–87, 88t; factors affecting, 28–42; homeschool policy design and, 87–89, 88t; during implementation, capacities of the state and, 42; inside vs. outside lobbying tactics and, 118; institutions and, 33–46, 36f, 86–87, 88t, 89–90; intentional use of, 30; interest groups and, 43–45, 117–18, 136; issue framing and, 124, 127–28; linked fate in, 118; market-based policies in, 30, 32–33; the New Right and, 23–28; parallel politics and, 18, 118; political participation and, 47, 88t; proximity of public policy and, 45–46, 88t; resource effects, 44–46, 85–90; rights-based policies in, 30, 32–33; scholars researching, 46; and social identities, goals, and capabilities of groups, 42; spillover effects of, 44, 90, 174, 179; status quo and, 30, 33, 35–42, 37t; unintended, 30; visibility and, 45–46, 88t, 89, 164. See also charter school policy feedback; homeschool policy feedback; interpretive effects; negative policy feedback; positive policy feedback think tanks: Cato Institute, 27; Chalcedon Foundation, 65–66, 93; coordinating conservative policy strategies, 27–28; definition of, 51; Heritage Foundation, 25, 27, 51, 68, 188; Hoover Institution, 30; Rabushka on individuals providing for themselves rather than relying on the government, 30; to translate conservative ideas into policies, 51 third-party policies, 86, 161, 228n27 third-party providers, 38 trade associations, 43–44 traditionalism, 25 Trump, Donald J.: on abortion, 187, 191; ANES on voting for, 170t, 171; on Christian heritage, 13; education policies and election of, 194; election of, as victory for conservative movement, 189; evangelical support for, 14, 191; Farris on, 13, 187; homeschool movement in election of, 9, 12–13, 188; parallelism in election of,

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Trump, Donald J.: (continued ) 16; populism and rise of, 23–24; on school choice, 13; on school choice policies, 191; Twitter posts, style and tone of, 181–82, 181t; white evangelical voters who support, 14 Trump administration: civil rights agenda of, 13; on “conscience rights,” 32, 189; conservative agenda and, 189; DeVos as Secretary of Education in, 3, 188; policy agenda of, 191 tuition tax credits, 79 tutors, private, 95–96 Tyler Group, 69 unborn, 26. See also fetus unemployment rate, 177, 205t, 229n40 unions: collective bargaining, 32, 82–83, 99–100; Democratic Party and, 38–39, 194; dues for representation, policies requiring, 75; Farris on homeschooling and, 107; NRWC’s opposition to, 74–75; on occupational licenses, 41; rights-based political policies on, 32. See also teachers’ unions United States: Census data, 177, 229n38; charter school policies in, 97–101, 98f, 99t; charter school students in, 5; compulsory education laws in, 56, 62, 67; education policies in, history of, 54–58; expenditures for public education in, 57; homeschooled students in, 2, 5; homeschool policies in, 93–97, 94f, 99t; North on creation of theocratic republic in, 70; policy-making process in, 9; private school students in, 5; rallies for Tea Party in, 184, 230n54; Religious Right’s libertarian vision for, 10–11; Tea Party groups in, 182–84, 230n48. See also individual states unschooling, 63 Utah, 131, 152 vaccinations, 30, 32, 39t, 40–41, 96–97, 133 values: ANES on traditional family, 168, 169t; of gun culture, 37; issue framing on, 91–92, 118; New Right on homeschooling and, 72; public schools and, 7, 58, 65; traditional, secularism and, 13. See also religious values Values Summit, 13 Vieux, Andrea, 149

Viguerie, Richard, 11, 25, 68 Virginia: CER ranking of charter school policies in, 152; charter school policies in, 99, 99t; cities in, 229n37; compulsory education law in, 56; Fairfax County, 146; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschooled students in, 2; homeschool informal organizations in, 146, 147t; homeschool policies in, 94, 99t, 147, 201; Patrick Henry College, 106; Richmond Tea Party, 182; segregation academies in, 59; Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation, 182 Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation, 182 virtual (online) school programs, 160, 193. See also distance learning programs Volker Fund, 65 volunteering, 86, 160–61, 173–74, 173t voting: by African Americans, 41; ALEC on identification laws for, 185; ANES on, 168, 170–71, 170t; charter schools and, 161–62; by college-educated adults, 195; conservative movement on, 185; conservatives on, 173, 173t; data on, 204–5, 205t; demographics of county residents and, 229n40; educational reforms and, 161–62; enrollment in homeschools and, 160, 176–77, 178t, 186; evangelicals as a bloc for, 24; for freedom policies, 89; homeowner associations on, 35; homeschool students and families on, 173, 173t; identity and, 190; NHERI study on, 167; parallel politics and, 179; policy proximity & salience and, 176–79, 178t, 205t; pro-family movement’s effect on, 72; race and, 177, 229n40; rights-based political policies on, 32; school-age population and, 177; spillover effects and, 90, 179; unemployment rate and, 177; Weyrich on, 185 vouchers: freedom policies and publicly funded, 30–31; housing, 31, 39t, 40. See also school vouchers Wake County, 2, 146 Warren, Elizabeth, 195 Washington, District of Columbia, 59, 132, 145 Washington Association of School Administrators, 154 Washington Education Association, 154

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Washington Post, 12, 68, 187 Washington State: Challem County, 176; charter school policies in, 99t, 153–55; Christian Heritage Home Educators of, 114; constitutionality of charter school law in, 154–55; El Centro de la Raza in, 154; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschooled students in, 2; homeschool informal organizations in, 147t; homeschool policies in, 95, 99t, 147, 201; HSLDA ranking of homeschool policies in, 152; King County, 176; League of Women Voters in, 154–55; The Learning Tree in Spokane curriculum, 104; marriage equality bill in, 132; Pend Orielle County, 176; Washington Association of School Administrators in, 154; Washington Education Association in, 154 Weaver, Vesla, 46–47 Welch, Sue, 103, 107 welfare programs, 169t, 170 West Virginia: civic infrastructure for homeschools in, 53; “failure to educate” as basis of child abuse in, 137; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschool informal organizations in, 146, 147t; homeschool policies in, 52–53, 99t, 147, 201; HSLDA ranking of homeschool policies in, 152; Kanawha County, 49–52, 61, 194, 215n1; Mooney representing, 179; public school closures and consolidation in, 160; school board president’s decision to homeschool her children, 3; Suiter’s activities in, 52–53; teacher’s activism in, 194; West Virginians for Religious Freedom, 53; WVHEA in, 53 West Virginia Home Educators Association (WVHEA), 53 West Virginians for Religious Freedom, 53 Weyrich, Paul: on culture war, 73; on Department of Education having authority over Christian schools, 66; on homeschooling, 73; on ideology of Political Correctness, 73; on IRS not granting tax-exempt status to segregation academies, 59–60; “Letter to Conservatives,” 73; Moral Majority founder, 73; as New Right policy entrepreneur, 11, 25, 68; on voting, 185

White County, 164 Whitehead, John, 93 whites: on charter schools, 195; charter school students and families, 6, 7t; data on voter turnout for presidential elections, 205t; evangelical voters who support Trump, 14; homeschool students and families, 6, 7t, 136, 193; on IRS not granting tax-exempt status to segregated private schools, 60; Republican Party ideology and, 39; in segregation academies, 59; voter turnout and county population of, 177 Why Americans Still Don’t Vote (Fox Piven & Cloward), 230n56 Wilcox, Clyde, 73, 119 Williamson, Kevin, 85, 157 Williamson, Vanessa, 180 Wisconsin: charter school policies in, 98, 99t; compulsory education laws in, 61; constitutional amendment defining marriage in, 132; Generation Joshua for Republican candidates in, 188; homeschool data in presidential election years from, 176; homeschool informal organizations in, 147t; homeschool policies in, 94, 99t, 147, 201; HSLDA’s work in, 109, 119; Nielsen’s homeschool organization in, 109; school voucher policies in, 83–84; Wisconsin Charter Schools Association, 144; Yoder v. Wisconsin, 61, 217n45 Wisconsin Charter Schools Association, 144 Witko, Christopher, 161 Witte, John, 150 women, 29, 38–39, 41 worker’s rights, 29, 32, 189, 194 workplace safety, 191 Wyden, Ron, 193 Wyoming, 56, 133, 184 Wyoming Tribune Eagle, 184 X, Malcolm, 49 xenophobia, 189 Yoder v. Wisconsin, 61, 217n45 Young, Hal, 110–11 Zelizer, Julian, 148

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