Stop Stigmatizing Homeschooling

A 2024 graduate of Hartford Public High School is suing her alma mater for allowing her to graduate … illiterate and with honors. Now, as a part-time freshman at the University of Connecticut, Aleysha Ortiz relies on speech-to-text to get through college essays. Ortiz was not a degenerate truant. On the contrary, she was quick to ask for help and take advantage of the resources available to her. 

Her story is one of persistent neglect, as she was ushered onward and upward by educators who failed to notice or care about her deficiencies. This is one sensationalized example of the failings of American public schools. 

It is not, however, unrepresentative of the general decay of public schools. State-level educational failure on a mass scale is normalized and accepted, while alternative educational methods are stigmatized. The most recent assessments of 12th-grade math proficiency among public-schooled students show stagnation at 24 percent. Reading proficiency has fallen from 40 percent in 1992 to 37 percent in 2019.