{"id":15825,"date":"2025-03-19T18:33:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T19:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15825"},"modified":"2025-03-19T20:03:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T20:03:27","slug":"the-federalist-liberal-judge-susan-crawfords-husband-promotes-lawfare-against-homeschool-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15825","title":{"rendered":"The Federalist: Liberal Judge Susan Crawford\u2019s Husband Promotes Lawfare Against Homeschool Families"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/reforminggovernment.org\/the-federalist-liberal-judge-susan-crawfords-husband-promotes-lawfare-against-homeschool-families\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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As appeared originally in the Federalist, published on March 18, 2025.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Progressive Judge Susan Crawford is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Her husband wrote a book against homeschooling.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For too long education experts have failed Wisconsin students. Too often the political left focuses on advancing a progressive narrative instead of simply teaching the basics. Recently, Wisconsin Gov. (and former education superintendent) Tony Evers proposed replacing mothers with \u201cinseminated persons\u201d in state law. Now, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Throughout her career she has proudly advanced progressive causes. So it should come as no surprise that her husband, Shawn F. Peters, wrote a controversial book on homeschooling recommending the removal of parents\u2019 right to homeschool their children in Wisconsin by using novel litigation tactics.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin voters deserve to know whether Judge Crawford supports her husband\u2019s extreme views on homeschooling. Should any litigation come before her that advances her husband\u2019s extreme legal claims, will she be able to objectively consider the arguments? According to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction statistics, \u201chome-based\u201d education continues to grow in popularity. While only 966 students were homeschooled during the 1984-85 academic year (0.10 percent), during the 2023-24 academic year almost 30,000 students (3.04 percent) benefited from a homeschool environment.<\/p>\n

Book Proposes IQ Tests for Parents<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s important to understand the arguments advocated by Judge Crawford\u2019s husband. Peters co-wrote\u00a0Homeschooling: The History & Philosophy Of A Controversial Practice<\/em>\u00a0with James G. Dwyer in 2019. Throughout the book, both authors take shots at \u201creligious conservatives\u201d and argue a \u201clarge percentage of homeschooling is objectively bad.\u201d They knock homeschooling as instilling misinformation and bad habits and values.<\/p>\n

In reality, they should be more concerned about public school outcomes. The most recent national test scores show only 31 percent of Wisconsin students are\u00a0proficient<\/a>\u00a0in reading. Homeschooled students, in repeated studies, typically score at the 65th<\/sup>\u00a0to 80th<\/sup>\u00a0percentile on nationally standardized achievement tests, which is 15 to 30 points higher, on average, than public school students, who average in the 50th<\/sup>\u00a0percentile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The authors\u2019 solution is to only allow homeschool parents to control their children\u2019s education if they consent to IQ tests to determine if the parents are qualified. In addition, they would require standardized testing and assessments of homeschooled students. They argue governments should enforce serious consequences if children do not make sufficient progress and the \u201cstate should revoke the parent\u2019s qualification to homeschool and mandate that the child attend a regular school.\u201d Nearly all public school teachers have government teaching certificates, while only about 10 percent of homeschool parents have ever received any accreditation, yet homeschool students consistently\u00a0outperform<\/a>\u00a0public-school students.<\/p>\n

The authors even go so far as to suggest that homeschool parents teach their children to demonize opponents, completely ignoring the many documented examples of viewpoint discrimination that has taken place against conservatives in public school settings. They even absurdly claim \u201cthe current regime of nonoversight inflicts particular harm on girls.\u201d This is indeed absurd when one considers the \u201charm\u201d experienced by biological girls over the last four years as many have been forced to share locker rooms, bathrooms, and athletic fields\/courts with biological boys. In one particularly\u00a0obscene example<\/a>, 14-year-old girls were forced to share locker room space with an 18-year-old male.<\/p>\n

Suing Homeschool Parents<\/h2>\n

But the most egregious part of the book focuses on the authors\u2019 legal recommendations, including \u201cusing litigation to force legislative action.\u201d Suing homeschool parents to force a desired outcome represents lawfare at its worst. They argue \u201cthe state\u2019s empowerment of parents to keep their children out of school, with no meaningful effort to ensure that the children still receive an adequate education and are not subject to maltreatment, effectively denies some children important state benefits that other children receive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents choose homeschooling for any number of reasons, something the authors fail to grasp. Parents choose to homeschool due to dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available in a traditional school setting or the desire to provide faith-based education. Parents can tailor instruction and curriculum to each student\u2019s unique strengths, limitations, interests, and learning styles. Whatever the reasons, parents have a right to choose how to best educate their kids.<\/p>\n

As with any segment of society, there will be bad actors.\u00a0But almost every mom or dad at home is motivated to help their children overcome any learning challenge and wants their kids to excel and thrive. The families we know that homeschool provide loving environments that provide many opportunities for kids to grow and learn \u2014 yes, even the girls. Progressives like Judge Crawford\u2019s husband would be better served working to improve failing public schools rather than attacking the home-based education setting relied on by almost 30,000 Wisconsin kids.<\/p>\n

Jake Curtis serves as general counsel at the Institute for Reforming Government and Matt Batzel serves as executive director of American Majority. Both are homeschool fathers who reside in Grafton and Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/reforminggovernment.org\/the-federalist-liberal-judge-susan-crawfords-husband-promotes-lawfare-against-homeschool-families\/ As appeared originally in the Federalist, published on March…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":15827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-institute-for-reforming-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15828,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825\/revisions\/15828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}