"I went to the principal, and I expressed my distress in not knowing this assembly was taking place and asked why I wasn't informed," Kimberly continues. "I told him my disappointment that they would assume this would be okay, and I wouldn't care." Instead of taking her concerns seriously, Kimberly was rebuffed. "I was told that since they were the ‘experts' and I was ‘just a mom,' I should leave the education . . . to the experts." Taking her concerns to the homeschool liaison, she was told the same things, but a bit stronger. Kimberly came away from that meeting with a very distinct impression. "The response was like ‘Listen, lady, once you drop the kids off at our door, they're ours, and you need to just trust us to take good care of them.' " Although it was only their first semester in public school-assisted homeschooling, both Kimberly and her husband agreed it would be their last.

We Shouldn't Be Surprised

The attitude of the teachers toward a homeschooling mom and her concerns shouldn't be all that surprising. The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union, has long supported and actively promoted the erroneous belief that homeschools are run by "well-meaning amateurs." In fact, this is the belief behind the marketing of public school-assisted homeschooling. Treon Goossen, private home educator and Home Education Legislative Analyst/Liaison for the Cunninghams' state of Colorado, agrees: "In order to get parents to enroll, public schools will imply that homeschooling parents are not capable of providing an adequate education on their own. They play on the emotions of parents and tug on their insecurities to make the argument that home schooled children cannot possibly succeed in life with only parental involvement. They plant seeds of doubt and water them with their answer to this imagined dilemma. They say, ‘Let us help you, and it won't cost you anything.' "

In fact, the cost can be high. The effects of the public school-assisted homeschooling concept are very noticeable in the families Kimberly has observed since then. "Parents are drawn in for a semester," Kimberly says. "It doesn't visibly hurt their kids, and the mom enjoys the break so much that she decides to put them all back in public school. We only know one other family that has shared school longer than a year and still predominantly homeschools. The others have been sucked back into the public system."

Of the fifteen families who were enrolled in the shared school program with Kimberly's family—all of whom solely homeschooled prior to the shared school option—only one besides Kimberly's is still homeschooling.

A Slippery Slope?

Such trends are alarming to Treon. "Over time, the public school system has slowly but surely infiltrated the homeschool community and it has steadily eroded parental commitment in education, which could possibly lead to the erosion of parental freedom in education. They say ‘it is all homeschooling,' but this blurring of the lines of independent homeschools and the public school programs at home is a dangerous, slippery slope."