Homeschoolers Welcome?

It should be as easy as one plus one equals two: A highly qualified student wants to attend Baylor University; Baylor wants the student to attend. No problem, right? Wrong.

If the applicant is younger than 18, does not have a state-recognized high school diploma and hasn't taken the General Educational Development Test (GED), then no matter how much both parties want it to happen, according to federal law, the applicant can't enroll as a degree-seeking student. At least, he or she can't without putting substantial federal student aid at risk, which potentially could deprive several thousand Baylor students of financial assistance under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.
Those falling into this category increasingly are among the growing number of homeschooled and privately schooled students. And, because of the lack of clarity in how the law has been written, confusion has abounded both for parents of homeschooled students and for admission personnel at Baylor and other universities.

A small but vocal group of homeschoolers and a quiet change in Texas law have muddied the already murky waters of federally mandated university admission policies for homeschooled students. In the last year, Baylor's Office of General Counsel and its Office of Admission Services have received e-mails and phone calls questioning Baylor's interpretation of the law. As misunderstandings simmer, the University continues to process applications for homeschooled students -- 81 undergraduate degree-seeking applicants were accepted in the last two years.

Areas of confusion

The confusion essentially boils down to two things: younger-than-average students seeking admission to college without a state-recognized high school diploma and Baylor's fiduciary responsibility not to put at risk federal student aid funds it receives -- close to $80 million annually. Homeschooled students often finish their curriculum before age 18 and want to continue their education in college; Texas law, however, doesn't recognize homeschool diplomas and says that a child must be in secondary school until age 18. Homeschooled students who are at least 17 have the option of taking the GED to enroll at Baylor. Some homeschool advocates, however, view the GED as a test for dropouts and want no part of it.

If you're confused, you're not alone. Join the ranks of college applicants and parents who homeschool, not to mention Baylor officials who are trying to follow the law, enroll students and, as much as possible, educate a misinformed public about the law.

"We want good quality people, and I think homeschoolers, as a group, probably are getting an exceptional education and they probably are being raised in a setting that exemplifies the Baylor mission," says Charles Beckenhauer, associate general counsel for the University. "But we can't turn our back on what the law tells us we have to do. I think we'll probably go through some bumps and some more criticism from time to time."

It wasn't always this way. Baylor and homeschoolers were on good terms in 1996 when the University dropped a requirement that homeschooled students take the GED. Diana Ramey, assistant vice president for enrollment management, says an admissions committee studied the issue and "didn't feel we needed it," she says. Then, in summer 2001, Baylor officials made a series of discoveries that sent them back to the law books for answers. They found that a key state law had changed in 1997, raising the age of compulsory high school attendance in Texas from 17 to 18 unless specifically exempted. An exemption allows a student to be 17 if he or she "has received a high school equivalency certificate," otherwise known as the GED.

Voluntary review

Baylor officials were alerted to the change in the law in the process of going over a voluntary review of their financial aid office by an independent group of financial aid directors the previous fall. The review group noted as a compliance exception the practice of admitting students who did not have a high school diploma and who were not 18. By then, however, Baylor already had admitted five students who didn't meet the age requirement. The students were informed that in order to keep their admission open they would need to take the GED.

As Baylor worked to comply with the new law, it found itself leading the efforts among universities to do so. Some homeschoolers expressed skepticism about Baylor's reasons for reinstating the GED requirement for some privately schooled applicants, claiming everything from greed to discrimination -- assertions that appeared on Web sites and in a flurry of letters to Baylor's legal department.

Texas coalition

Tim Lambert, president of the Texas Home School Coalition, which reports 60,000 subscribers to its quarterly magazine and provides information and a support network to homeschoolers in the state, says Baylor changed its policy and was "heavy-handed" to accept the students then reject them: "That was our dissent with Baylor."

There's a difference between policy and law, Beckenhauer says. "We came to the opinion that we had wrongly admitted some applicants, wrongly in the sense that we were not in compliance with federal law. We made a mistake in terms of understanding what the law was, but that's not a reason, in our view, to continue to not comply. We're saying we don't have discretion if we want to take federal financial assistance."

Four of the five students who did not meet the age requirement in 2001 were enrolled later. "We were able to work that out with a resolution that we felt complied with the law," Beckenhauer says. "That's what we tried to do in all cases ... we wanted them, they wanted to come to Baylor. We worked really hard to try to find middle ground."

By summer 2002, the confusion had abated, with no newly enrolled students taking issue with the GED requirement. But queries to both Ramey's and Beckenhauer's offices show that the misunderstandings still exist for others. Baylor is researching the law through the U.S. Department of Education and the Texas Education Agency. Meanwhile, the admissions office continues to enroll properly qualified homeschooled students and assists younger applicants on a case-by-case basis. Ramey says such cases are rare, "which allows us to work very individually with them."

First stop

For people who want to attend Baylor, Ramey's office is the first stop, and the University requires the same initial credentials of all students: official test results and an academic record that gives an idea of the student's high school curriculum. All entering freshmen also must write an essay. The University then looks at other requirements, including age. Homeschooled students who don't follow a traditional public school calendar can finish high school at 16 or even younger. In Texas, where three-fourths of Baylor's students are from, one must be 17 to take the GED. Complicating the matter further is that different states have different ages of compulsory attendance.

If age is the first snag, taking the GED often is the second, say Ramey and Beckenhauer. Home-educated students believe they receive an excellent education and "the GED implies something else," Ramey says.
Lambert agrees with that view. "The evidence shows that our students are equal" to those students who attend private schools, he says. "The GED makes them appear not to be." The evidence he cites is from SAT and ACT scores, which he says are higher for homeschooled students than the national average. Additionally, Lambert insists Texas does recognize homeschool diplomas and says Baylor interprets the law narrowly when it claims otherwise.

"I say Texas does treat them as graduates. (Beckenhauer) says he doesn't have a statute that says that," Lambert says.

TEA approval

Giving Baylor's stance validity, Beckenhauer says, is that the TEA has told him Baylor is correct in its interpretation. "The statute expressly states that the age of compulsory attendance continues until age 18, or 17 with a high school diploma or the GED," he says. "Because we had inquiries from a 13-year-old, I asked TEA whether a homeschooled 13-year-old is beyond the age of compulsory attendance if the parents indicate that the child had finished homeschooling. TEA indicated informally that such a child is not beyond the age of compulsory attendance. As a result, there does not appear to be an exception to the age dictated by statute for homeschooled graduates."

Therein lies much of the problem -- for homeschoolers and universities. Lack of clearly written law leaves opportunity for a variety of interpretation, with no one sure who's right.

"We've been very proactive to try to get the law changed and get it clearer," says Cliff Neel, an assistant vice president and Baylor's director of academic scholarships and financial aid. "We're trying to make it easier. We're not giving up. We're doing it for the students and families and Baylor, as well as our colleagues at other universities."

Meanwhile, homeschoolers keep applying to Baylor. Applications from homeschoolers increased 47 percent from 38 applications in 2001 to 56 applications in 2002. This year, about 7 percent of the entire application pool of about 8,900 had to be researched individually because the students were younger than the law allows. Of that number, Ramey had only two dozen applicants under age 18 who had attended unaccredited schools and thus were required to take the GED. Nine of the 24 paid their deposit, and of those nine, five were homeschooled, three were from unaccredited private schools and one had not graduated from high school. All nine did what was required to attend Baylor, she says. As of last fall, 61 Baylor undergraduates were homeschooled; 22 of those enrolled as new students in fall 2002 compared to 20 who enrolled as new students in fall 2001.

"We do the best we can to give them as much information as early as possible," Ramey says of the process.

National trends

Nationwide, the number of children being schooled at home is growing. One estimate puts it at 790,000 children between ages 6 and 17 in 1999 (see sidebar on page 28). Yet, Dr. Robert J. Yinger, dean of Baylor's School of Education, points out that it's a small number, almost not on the "radar screen," he says, compared to the 90 percent of U.S. children in public schools, where there is a "crying need" for quality education. The need in public education "has captured 100 percent of our attention," he says. His numbers show that fewer than 2 percent of U.S. children are homeschooled, which is small even compared to private schools, which educate about 10 percent of American children.

Lambert's Texas coalition estimates 100,000 Texas families are educating 300,000 children at home and puts the growth between 16 percent and 20 percent annually -- one of the highest rates in the nation, he says. He also notes an increasing trend toward homeschoolers educating their children through high school, rather than only during the elementary school years. The state levies almost no curriculum requirements on home educators, which encourages parents to homeschool, he says. Homeschoolers must teach reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and good citizenship, he says.

"We prize our freedom so much that what other home educators see as reasonable restriction, we see as anathema. As Texans, we're more independent than other home educators," Lambert says.

State Sen. Kip Averitt, BA and BBA '77, MBA '78, is a member of the state's education committee, and he agrees the state should leave homeschoolers alone. "Those folks have a good reason to want to homeschool their children and generally are capable of doing a good job in that regard. I think that because the state of Texas recognizes that it's their right to do it, we don't get into their business."

Systematic reviews

Nor does Baylor want to reject qualified homeschooled students, says Dr. Charles S. Madden, vice president for Univer-sity relations. He originally encouraged the review of the financial aid office that uncovered the admission error. An outside, systematic review is good for many reasons, he says, including helping a department see if it's "broken" anything while fixing something else. The University wasn't on the hunt for homeschoolers when it approved the review, he says.

"The culture of homeschool is a proud and embattled tradition," Dr. Madden says. Its advocates are familiar with being told no by people who have no respect for what they're doing, he adds, but for Baylor, the opposite is true.

"I know there are people who are biased against homeschool because I've run into it. If anything, we are biased toward homeschool," he says. "We are just not so enamored of it we are willing to risk federal money for the rest of our more than 10,000 students."