HSLDA’s director of group services, Darren Jones, recently reported on a Harvard University panel he attended that discussed the development of options for homeschoolers to participate in groups and services outside the home. One of the panelists, Bernita Bradley, is the founder of a homeschool co-op in Detroit, Michigan that operates “solely on private grants.” She said she avoids subjecting her organization to “being forced to emulate some of the public-school practices that can be harmful” to her students. Her co-op currently serves 120 Detroit-area families but she believes her core mission is to train parents to homeschool their own children. Another panelist, Emily Hill, runs a “collaborative classical nature academy” for homeschoolers in Colorado. She teaches from a Christian perspective, although the emphasis is more on overall moral instruction. She believes that the basis for the morals parents adhere to “is usually a faith tradition and this sort of religious instruction is just not possible in public schools.” Some panelists lamented that state funding of school choice in some states involves navigating “a host of regulators,” which is why HSLDA and other conservative groups have cautioned against mixing public funding with private homeschooling. The consensus of the panel was that homeschooling is a proven success and that, in the words of the symposium organizers, these emerging models, including co-ops and microschooling, “are moving into the mainstream.” Jones said he talked to parents and education leaders about taking advantage of these trends “to provide new services and opportunities to homeschooling families. HSLDA needs to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in schooling and education-related legislation.... As always, our focus is how to defend and advance the rights of homeschooling families.” Perhaps most interesting about the symposium is the fact that it was held at the liberal bastion of Harvard University.

Actor and former child star Kirk Cameron is continuing his quest to foster wholesome reading material for schoolchildren by marketing SkyTree Book Fairs, which he hopes will eventually grow to rival Scholastic. “SkyTree Book Fair and I did a deep dive and discovered the cause of why sexually explicit and disgusting books get into our children’s schools, classrooms, and libraries,” Cameron said. They found that Scholastic promotes objectionable and pornographic books at school book fairs. He cited as an example Welcome to St. Hell, “a 2022 Scholastic book glamorizing gender transitioning to middle schoolers.” In an email promoting SkyTree, Cameron included pictures of a few of this book’s pornographic pages, but had to sensor them because “the original content could violate social media policies against adult material.” Scholastic has held a monopoly for decades on school book fairs, and as Cameron writes, “has fallen prey to the woke mob and radical LGBT political agenda.” SkyTree was developed as a result of Cameron’s first children’s book, As You Grow. Education Reporter followed his quest to secure story hour slots at 50 libraries across the country after his faith-based book was published, and was turned down by all of them until he threatened to sue. Now he’s helping SkyTree bring its book fairs to schools across the country. Cameron says: “SkyTree will not only promote age-appropriate books, but they will do so more efficiently to make it easier for schools to choose SkyTree over Scholastic. And it’s working because SkyTree has already secured its first public school book fair in Spotsylvania, VA.” SkyTree will not offer “race-infused storylines” or “confusing gender content,” but will focus on content that “will nurture childhood innocence and character.” Cameron hopes like-minded parents will help support SkyTree financially, as book fairs are expensive endeavors. Education Reporter will be following its progress.

Scores on the college admissions ACT tests hit a 30-year low in 2023, but instead of confronting the problem, some universities are lowering their admissions requirements. Blaze Media (theblaze.com) reported in October that “high school students’ results have been declining for six consecutive years.... According to ACT, between 2022 and 2023, the average mathematics score dropped 0.3 points, English 0.4 points, reading 0.3 points, and science 0.3 points.” Average scores were below ACT’s “College Readiness Benchmarks” in math, reading, and science, which means they were below the minimum requirements for students to have a “high probability” of success in their college-level courses. Four in ten students met “none of the college readiness benchmarks” this year, with 70 percent failing to meet basic college readiness standards in math. ACT CEO Janet Godwin told Blaze Media: “The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career. These systemic problems require sustained action and support at the policy level. This is not up to teachers and principals alone — it is a shared national priority and imperative.” But instead of sounding the trumpet throughout the U.S. education system in an attempt to address the problem at the K-12 level, some universities are adopting “test-optional admissions standards.” Examples include Columbia University, Dartmouth, Harvard, New York University, Stanford, and Yale. Columbia announced in March that it “would permanently drop SAT and ACT testing requirements, becoming the first Ivy League school to do so.” Some observers wonder if these universities no longer value basic academic skills because the goal of creating Marxist activists through Critical Theory pedagogy will continue to be the main focus of students’ higher education.

The U.S. Census Bureau wants $10 million to add a question about sexual identity to its “American Community Survey,” which is sent out annually to more than 3.5 million Americans, including recipients as young as 15 years old. An article on Just The News.com reports that the bureau is “under fire for embracing progressive ideology around gender and sexuality and pushing for taxpayer dollars to fund it.” Both U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) have sent a letter to U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos urging him to scuttle the plan to include the inappropriate questions. Just The News.com says the proposed change appears in the federal register showing that the survey “would ask about both someone’s sex ‘assigned at birth’ as well as asking for someone’s ‘current gender.’ That question would give the options of ‘Male, Female, Transgender, Nonbinary,’ and ‘This person uses a different term’ with an option to fill in the blank.” The budget request for the $10 million claims an “emerging need of our Nation is to improve the measurement of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) population” and that this is “a critical step in producing accurate data.” But the senators contend in their letter that “this could hurt the agency’s credibility in the eyes of the American people. Biology determines gender, not subjective belief, and the bureau should not jeopardize the legitimacy of crucial statistical information by endorsing unscientific and untrue concepts like gender identity. For generations, the American people have looked to the U.S. Census as an unbiased, authoritative source describing the objective reality of life in America. It is not worth sacrificing this trust to advance controversial social ideas through government surveys.” Other organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, also blasted the idea, accusing the federal government of “pushing a political agenda.” The Bureau also reportedly wants to add survey questions about race, but as the Heritage spokesman noted: “It’s time for the administrative state to stop contributing to the division of our country into identity groups.”

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