Record: Matthew J. Kararo and Neil A. Knobloch, “An Analysis of Education-related Policies Regarding the Participation Potential of Homeschool Students in Agricultural Education and FFA” in Journal of Agricultural Education 59(2018): 36-57. [Abstract here]
Summary: Matthew Kararo is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Florida International University in the Department of Biological Sciences and the STEM Transformation Institute. Dr. Neil A. Knobloch is the chair of the graduate program at Purdue University, the director of the Learner-Centered Teaching Project, and the coordinator of the Life Science Education Signature Area. His research interests include motivation, learner-centered teaching, and experiential learning. Through his research, Dr. Knobloch seeks to improve science literacy through informal life science education.
In this article Karo and Knobloch join forces to investigate the possibility of expanding educational opportunities the Future Farmers Association (FFA) provides in public schools to homeschoolers. To do that they employed a very creative methodology that sought to turn three things–a state’s willingness to allow homeschoolers to take classes at public schools, a state’s overall homeschooling regulatory environment, and state FFA organizations’ policies–into a numerical value to rank the likelihood that that state’s homeschoolers would be able to take advantage of FFA education.
Here’s how they did it. They began with state policies about part-time enrollment. Drawing their data from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education’s (CRHE) remarkable state-by-state homeschooling law resource, they identified four states that forbid part-time enrollment (HI, MD, NY, and OK), fourteen that require it be permitted, and thirty-two that leave it up to local discretion. They scored the four states banning it with a 0, the 32 states that make it optional with a 1, and the 14 states that require it with a 2.
For state homeschooling law the authors combined CHRE’s data with that available at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)’s website. States with high regulation of homeschooling scored a 1. Those with lower levels scored a 2, 3 or 4 based upon how free of regulations they were. Five states scored a 1, twenty a 2, and fifteen a 3. According to Kararo and Knobloch, no state is so free of regulations as to score a 4.
Finally, to quantify FFA policy they looked at the various state FFA constitutions. For homeschooler access, the most restrictive state constitutions required that FFA members be enrolled in at least one approved agriculture education course per year at a local school and also participate in a supervised agricultural experience. Ten state constitutions require both, garnering them a rating of 1 by the researchers. Thirty-nine states only require one or the other of these commitments, earning them a score of 2. Additional points were awarded to some states based on special policies some of them had. Some states explicitly permit private school participation in FFA, earning them 1 extra point. Some states (three to be exact–AL, LA, and NC) explicitly mention homeschoolers in their constitution, earning them 1 extra point.
After explaining all of this the authors run the numbers and conclude the following about the potential of each state’s homeschooling population to become FFA members and take its agricultural education classes. Five states scored 8 or above, earning the designation of “high potential access” (p. 45). These states are AK, ID, IL, MI, and NC. Twenty-three states scored a 6 or 7 and thus have “moderate potential access.” Eighteen states scored a 4 or 5 and thus have “low potential access.” Finally, four states (HI, MD, NY, and OK) scored 3 or below and thus have “no potential access” (p. 46). These are the same states, it will be recalled, that explicitly forbid homeschoolers from attending public schools part time.
After explaining all of this Kararo and Knobloch lay out some implications. First, avoiding the state regulatory issues, they hone on the FFA itself, suggesting that FFA state organizations might consider revising or at least clarifying their requirements for membership. Many constitutions’ membership rules seem to assume that all students are already attending school, but there is enough ambiguity that it is possible that non-attenders could qualify by participating in alternative activities. The authors would like clarity and hopefully more leeway for nontraditional students to meet membership requirements through activities occurring outside of the traditional public school classroom, especially in the form of supervised agricultural experiences. They’d also like to see more states follow NC’s and AK’s lead and explicitly articulate how homeschooled students might join and participate.
Second, Kararo and Knobloch think that given the fact that the majority of states leave part-time enrollment up to individual districts, future research should compile a more granular, district-by-district summation of current policy to inform FFA hopefuls of what is possible where.
Third, Kararo and Knobloch wonder if some sort of online FFA option might satisfy requirements in various states and FFA chapters’ own membership requirements. These courses would be taught by state-certified agricultural teachers and hence would potentially count for homeschoolers who might not have access to public education in their own state but could potentially enroll in a different state.
Fourth, other states might follow NC’s and AK’s lead and allow homeschooling parents to be teachers of agricultural education curriculum. Kararo and Knobloch suggest tweaking this to have a certified agricultural educator supervise such situations to ensure that parents are meeting standards.
Appraisal: What a refreshing piece of work! I’ve been doing these reviews since 2008, and this is the first study I’ve read that discusses homeschooling in the context of agricultural education. Moreover, it offers a robust methodology that tries to reduce all 50 states’ dual enrollment policies, overall regulatory environment, and FFA rules down to something that can be quantified and rank ordered. That’s a lot for one article to promise, and Kararo and Knobloch deliver.
I do have a couple of critiques of the methodology, however, as much as I admire what the two have accomplished. The major flaw, it seems to me, comes with the weight ascribed to the differing state regulatory policies. Several of the states that require homeschoolers be permitted to enroll in public school classes part-time were nevertheless placed in the “moderate potential access” category because of these states’ overall regulatory requirements. Why? Because “there could be required subjects that limit the flexibility of homeschool parents desiring to incorporate Agricultural Education into their curriculum.” (p. 45) Similarly, two states that require part-time enrollment were put in the “low potential access” because of their “higher level of homeschooling regulation.” (p. 46) I think Kararo and Knobloch, understandably, are assuming that when a state writes into its homeschooling law that homeschooled students are required to study certain subjects, that’s what homeschoolers do. But the vast majority of states have no mechanism to oversee the degree to which homeschoolers are actually meeting those curricular mandates. Very, very few homeschooling parents would say to themselves, “I’d love for my child to do something with agriculture, but we just don’t have time in the day given all of these state curricular requirements we have to keep meeting.” That just doesn’t happen, and failing to realize that leads the authors to think regulations are heavier in many states than they actually are.
A second critique has to do with one of their policy recommendations. Kararo and Knobloch seem to my ears not to understand that public online education is not something that crosses state boundaries. It has been a divisive issue even to allow charter schools, for example, to enroll students across district lines, as many school districts resent sending their money to another district when one of their resident children decide to enroll in a charter school elsewhere. There is no national school system in the United States. Every state’s system is self-contained and not available to students in other states, even online.
Despite these missteps I really enjoyed the article. It places a lot of great information (completely lifted from CRHE and HSLDA, but still) in a tidy package and suggests, persuasively I think, that FFA state chapters should look at the language of their constitutions and consider revising them. The suggested revisions offered here sound common-sensical to me, even if the actual numeric ranking of the states has potential problems. I hope someone in the organization is listening.
Milton Gaither