When Kathleen Augustin—who graduated from her family’s homeschool program in 1987—applied for a job this summer at a New York City hospital, she hoped the position would do more than pay the bills. She needed the work to pursue higher education and advance her career.
These goals were put on hold when her prospective employer raised objections to Kathleen’s homeschool diploma.
HSLDA Senior Counsel Tj Schmidt helped Kathleen resolve the situation. But he observed that her dilemma illustrates the need for new laws to ensure homeschool graduates in the Empire State are treated fairly as they compete for post-high school opportunities.
Sad goodbye
The difficulty Kathleen experienced in landing a job came after a personally troubling time. She had temporarily left the workforce to care for her ailing mother, who homeschooled her in New York City decades ago. After her mother passed away, Kathleen once again sought employment while pursuing a degree in nursing.
Kathleen applied in early June for a position doing patient registration in an emergency room. There was no question about her qualifications for the job. She has previous experience in a similar role and trained as a certified medical assistant at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Hospital officials said they liked Kathleen’s expertise, but that they couldn’t offer her the job until they cleared up questions about the validity of her homeschool diploma and transcripts, which were issued by her mother in 1987.
“I was disappointed,” Kathleen recalled. “I didn’t understand what the holdup was.”
Not in the database
Schmidt explained that the problem arose due to a standardized process for conducting background checks to verify job candidates’ credentials. Employers often rely on a third party who is not necessarily equipped to investigate individuals with homeschool backgrounds.
“People who conduct these checks rely on state records and companies with access to large databases, such as the National Student Clearinghouse,” Schmidt said. “However, these methods typically don’t work when verifying homeschool students.”
Schmidt added that for recent New York homeschool graduates, it is possible to verify their records by reaching out to public school officials. In most other districts in the state, this means contacting the public school superintendent’s office. In New York City, homeschool paperwork is submitted to a centralized office. (The metropolis is divided into 32 school districts to accommodate 900,000 students.)
Current law only requires officials to keep homeschool records for six years at most. So when Kathleen called the city homeschool office to see if officials there could help her, the best they could do was refer her to HSLDA.
“That did help out,” Kathleen noted, because it connected her with an organization that makes it a priority to advocate for homeschool graduates.
Schmidt reached out to the hospital on behalf of Kathleen. He explained to the human resources department that Kathleen’s parents had complied with state homeschool law, but that no provision existed within the current legal system for verifying her diploma.
He also offered to provide written verification of her homeschool credentials, but this proved unnecessary. He heard from hospital officials in mid-June that they intended to offer Kathleen the job.
A lesson from history
The timing of Kathleen’s graduation could have complicated compiling her records even further. The year she finished high school, HSLDA was involved in litigation aimed at ending the inconsistent and sometimes arbitrary application of homeschool law in New York.
“It was the Wild West,” Schmidt remarked.
Then, as now, parents invoked the right to homeschool under a provision in state law that permits them to provide an education that is “substantially equivalent” to public schools. However, at that time, each individual school superintendent decided what constituted a substantially equivalent education and how homeschooling parents could prove they were providing it.
That changed following a federal court case that began in 1986, Blackwelder v. Safnauer, in which HSLDA founder Mike Farris was lead counsel. After a decision by the court in favor of homeschooling in 1988, the state commissioner of education issued a set of homeschool regulations later that year–what homeschooling families in New York now know as Section 100.10 of the Commissioner’s Regulations.
“This meant it was no longer a subjective determination as to whether families were legally homeschooling,” Schmidt said. “As long as parents provide the information and follow the steps outlined in the regulations, they are considered to be providing an equivalent education. It’s not up to each district anymore.”
Nevertheless, Schmidt said the time has come for additional reforms to help graduates like Kathleen.
One piece of legislation introduced in the current session of the state legislature, Assembly Bill A2326, aims to do just that. The measure proposes that public school superintendents provide homeschool graduates a letter attesting to their educational achievement. The intention is that the document will verify that homeschool students have attained a bona fide education according to the state and are qualified to apply for employment or higher education based on their individual merits. Students will be able to provide this letter to colleges or potential employers should their homeschool credentials be called into question.
“This is an important issue that we’ve been trying to address with the help of the state organization Homeschool New York (previously Loving Education at Home (LEAH)) and other advocates,” Schmidt said. “It’s time to modernize the system and level the playing field for homeschool graduates.”