FAIRSD

At first glance, “school choice” legislation can sound appealing. Promises of “funding students instead of systems” and “empowering parents” are easy to like. But behind the catchy slogans, these bills often contain a catch that should alarm every homeschooling family: government money always comes with government strings.

When lawmakers offer taxpayer funds to homeschoolers, whether through Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), vouchers, or other programs, they also gain the power to decide how that money is spent. Once a family accepts those funds, the government has a justification to set rules, create oversight mechanisms, and mandate curriculum, testing, teacher qualifications, or reporting requirements. This is not hypothetical. It’s a well-established pattern in education policy: funding and regulation go hand in hand.

For homeschoolers, this means that programs sold as “optional” today can become the justification for regulating all homeschoolers tomorrow. Once homeschoolers are defined in law as recipients of public education funds, even indirectly, it becomes much easier for legislators to argue that all homeschoolers should be held to the same standards as government-funded students.

We’ve seen this progression in other states. At first, participation in a funding program is voluntary. Over time, eligibility rules change, requirements expand, and oversight increases. Families who never took a dime can still end up subject to new laws written in the name of “accountability.” The distinction between publicly funded and privately funded homeschooling becomes blurred, and eventually, erased altogether.

Homeschooling thrives precisely because parents, not the government, are in charge. Accepting public money compromises that independence. No matter how small the initial “strings” appear, they open the door for more regulation later.

FAIRSD's position is simple: we oppose all forms of "school choice" legislation that include homeschoolers as eligible recipients of taxpayer funds. The safest way to protect homeschooling freedom is to keep education funding and homeschooling completely separate. Homeschoolers have fought for decades to maintain the right to direct our children’s education without government interference. We cannot afford to trade that hard-won freedom for short-term financial incentives.

True educational freedom means saying “no” to funding that comes at the cost of control. For the sake of our children’s future and the independence of home education, we must keep homeschoolers entirely outside the scope of government funding.