I find these administrative shenanigans to be more than a little amusing:
More than 22,620 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state’s dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures. But that’s where the scrutiny of this growing population seems to end, leaving some experts convinced that schools are disguising thousands of middle and high school dropouts in this hands-off category. While home-schooling’s popularity has increased, the rate of growth concentrated in Texas’ high school population is off the chart: It’s nearly tripled in the last decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.
“That’s just ridiculous,” said Brian D. Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute. “It doesn’t sound very believable.”
Now, keep in mind that the public school administrators who are cooking their attendance books this way are the very bureaucrats that some misguided individuals genuinely believe should be in charge of deciding whether parents are permitted to homeschool their children or not. But at least it is clear that the administrators have finally come to terms with accepting that homeschooling is here to stay.
There can be little question that this malfeasance by the public school officials will be utilized as an excuse to justify calling for more administrative control over homeschooling in Texas. But even an education major should be able to detect the ironic weakness in that argument.