With no state oversight for homeschooling, quality of education in Schumm home questioned

Unlike accredited public and private schools, Kansas does not regulate home schools

By Luke Ranker

luke.ranker@cjonline.com

No state records exist regarding the quality of education offered to more than a dozen children at a school operated for five years by a Topeka couple accused of child abuse.

Unlike accredited public and private schools, the nonaccredited private school City Councilman Jonathan Schumm and his wife, Allison Schumm, operated — and others like it — don’t adhere to state standards for education. Home-schooled students also don’t take state assessment tests, so the state can’t track how students in such schools learn.

“As far as quality, that’s up to the parents,” Dale Dennis, deputy education commissioner, said Monday.

The Schumms were booked into the Shawnee County Jail on Nov. 19 and posted bond the next day. Police arrested the couple in connection with one count each of aggravated battery and — as an alternative — abuse of a child (torture or cruelly beating a child younger than 18), which occurred between Oct. 7 and Oct. 11, as well as four counts of endangering a child, which occurred Oct. 31, a jail official said.

Allison Schumm chronicled “surviving” while home schooling more than a dozen children, but it is unclear whether those children received a quality education.

When Allison Schumm wrote about schooling 14 children in 2013 and 2014 on the website homeschoolsurvival.com, she described being in “survival mode since we took our first foster care placement almost 8 years ago.” In one post from 2014, she described visits to the library as “like herding cats.”

Jonathan Schumm, who was also home-schooled according to his LinkedIn page, registered the family’s home at 2713 S.E. Michigan as “Salt Light Academy,” a nonaccredited private school, in May 2010. His wife became custodian of the school in September of this year.

In her posts, Allison Schumm describes various techniques for home schooling children, blogged about taking her children to the library and linked to online resources for home schooling. One website focused on promoting the “Puritan Reformation in the State, Church and Family.” Other links, like one for a website called Frugally Educate, appear to no longer be valid.

A state statute passed in 1982 outlines in just over 300 words the policy for registering nonaccredited private schools, the designation for home schools. Beyond a form requiring the name, address and contact information for a home-school custodian, the law doesn’t specify teacher qualifications, education requirements or the number of students that can be taught at home.

Kansas Department of Education records indicate more than 30,000 nonaccredited private schools have formed in the state, but it is unclear how many of those schools still operate. The state isn’t required to check on home schools after they register, Dennis said.

“The law says those teachers must be ‘competent,’ but there’s no definition of what ‘competent’ means,” he said.

With limited oversight from the state, Mark Tallman, associate executive director of the Kansas Association of School Boards, said it is unknown whether home-schooled students are receiving a quality education. Public schools are subject to laws regulating curriculum, teachers’ licenses, open records and meetings, and assessment programs. Home schools aren’t required to meet any of those standards.

“It’s basically night and day,” he said.

The current system has benefits for home schools, but there are merits for some regulations, said Jessica Smith, a Topeka mom who has home-schooled her 11-year-old son for three years.

Smith said she wouldn’t have a problem reporting what her son, who has autism, learned each year. Requiring home-schooled students to take a state assessment may be trickier, she said, because most home schools don’t teach to a specific test and the teaching methods vary in each home.

Until last May, Smith was involved in a home-school cooperative where several parents rotated teaching weekly classes, but left because of a lack of commitment from other families. To supplement her home education, she participates in bimonthly “wacky science” classes with other parents and a book club that gives children the opportunity to interact in groups.

“I know there are a lot of critics who see us take our kids out of the mainstream and think we’ll screw up somehow, but my son has thrived,” she said. “My son is now doing math at middle school level because we can do it at his pace.”

The Kansas Legislature has been reluctant to vet a bill regulating nonaccredited private schools.

Rep. Ron Highland, a Wamego Republican and chairman of the House Education committee, said there hasn’t been a push in recent years for further regulation of home schools. Highland also said he hasn’t heard extensive criticism about home schooling.

“These parents feel very strongly that this is how their children should learn, so they’ve taken that responsibility on themselves,” he said. “So far, it seems to have worked just fine.”

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said he believes the department of education should be able to tally the number of students in home school, and he would support a registration requirement allowing that. However, he predicted the Legislature wouldn’t consider any significant changes to home school regulation.

“In the current political climate, I don’t see any changes,” he said. “There hasn’t been any willingness for legislators.”

Luke Ranker can be reached at 785-295-1270 or luke.ranker@cjonline.com.
Follow Luke on Twitter @lrankerNEWS.