Tax Credits for Home-Schooling

Today’s New York Times website is hosting a debate on whether there should be a federal tax credit for parents who homeschool. Many of the official commentators think that regulation should accompany the money, if indeed a tax credit should be given at all.

I have news for them. In many states, there is already regulation, with or without the credit. My home state, Georgia, regulates with a relatively light hand: every year, we have to send the local school board a declaration of intent to homeschool, we have to submit attendance records, and, after third grade, we have to inflict (yes, that’s the verb I would choose) standardized tests on our kids every three years. We have to keep the test results on file in case someone from the county school board asks for them. (To be clear: our kids—a fifteen year old ninth grader and a thirteen year old seventh grader—take standardized tests every year; the tests don’t tell us anything we don’t already know about our kids’ strengths and weaknesses, but taking standardized tests is a life skill, at least until one has been admitted to graduate or professional school.)

So let’s separate the issue of tax credits from the issue of regulation. States can regulate with or without offering benefits to which strings can be attached.

The case for offering homeschoolers a tax break is the same as that for offering vouchers or tax credits for private school tuition.  Education is indeed a social good, but it is also, and above all, a parental responsibility. Why not help parents make the best choices they can in fulfilling that responsibility?

Whether or not these tax credits should come from the federal government is a separate question. To the degree that education really isn’t obviously a federal responsibility, as one commentator argues, perhaps it would be better for this to be a state matter. A Republican Congress that wishes to demonstrate its limited government and limited Constitution bona fides might be well-advised to expend its efforts in other ways.

A last side note: the readers’ comments displayed an appalling hostility to and ignorance of homeschooling. I’m glad, I suppose, that they’re not my neighbors, though perhaps if they were, they’d be less hostile.  (Not because I’m such a nice guy, but because my kids are so presentable.)