Outside, Wanting In

By John Cloud/Ann Arbor

The Tolberts of Pinckney, in southeastern Michigan, are all very tall. It can be hard for girls to be big, which is one reason James and Denise Tolbert were happy that Kristina, their 16-year-old, 6-ft. 3-in. daughter, wanted to play basketball. But Pinckney High School won't let Kristina on the team. Like virtually all schools in the state, Pinckney has a rule that no one can play any sport unless she's enrolled. And Kristina and her brother Josh (only 14 and already 6 ft. 2 in.) are home schooled.

Now James Tolbert has sued the school system to change those rules. And other home-school advocates have taken this issue to Michigan's legislature, where it has split the Republican Party. For Tolbert, it's an issue of basic fairness: "The state should provide these [athletic] benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis," says Stephen Safranek, the lawyer behind the Tolberts and six other families. "We all pay the same taxes."

Opponents also see it as a matter of fairness--not fairness to taxpayers but to students. Officials say kids in traditional schools follow strict requirements--good attendance, decent grades--to become eligible for athletics. They say they have no way to know whether parents would lie to make their home schoolers eligible. And above all, administrators fear that home schoolers, who would parachute in for practice after a day at the house, could undermine a school's sense of community. They argue that a full-time social investment in a school is what entitles kids to play basketball.

Safranek says this argument ignores school rules, which allow enrolled students never to set foot on campus. (They can take classes at community colleges if they wish.) He suspects the rules are really motivated by bias against home schooling, and he takes offense at the notion that his clients would lie to make their kids eligible.

That home schoolers have begun a debate about the nature of a school community is a little strange. For years they simply withdrew kids from the broader community often because they felt its schools had become antireligious. They fought bitter battles for the right to change old compulsory-education laws, which have now been rewritten or reinterpreted in every state to allow home schooling. Many Americans still have an image of home schoolers as conservative ideologues at best--and weird hermits at worst.

But such images, always a stretch, are now totally outmoded. Those who study the issue say there are probably 1 million to 1.7 million home schoolers in the U.S. (more than 1% of school-age children). Whatever the precise figure, it has jumped since Columbine (North Carolina found this fall that its number of registered home schools had shot up 22% to 16,022 since April).

The home-school movement has reached beyond the odd coalition of religious conservatives and countercultural libertarians who started it. Now the top reason parents give for home schooling is dissatisfaction with public schools, where guns, drugs, and peer pressure leave them feeling vulnerable. This new generation of home-schooling families doesn't necessarily believe that public schools are unholy. And many want their children's character toughened by swim meets and coaches' whistles and Friday-night football games.

The kids want it too. "That issue is really the bane of the home-school movement," says Isabel Lyman, who is writing a book on home schooling for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "The teen years are the highest years of attrition for home schoolers, in part because teens want to play sports." Parents have agitated for that right in various states for more than a decade, when the first large cohort of home schoolers hit high school age. They succeeded in 10 states, which passed laws mandating that schools allow those children taught at home to play on public school teams (some of the laws allow access to other electives such as band and art classes).

But the home-school movement is itself divided over the issue, which is one reason home-school-friendly states such as Michigan haven't passed similar laws. Michael Farris, who cofounded the Home School Legal Defense Association in 1983, says he believes "rank-and-file" home-school parents are split fifty-fifty on whether their kids should play on public teams. What's the point of being home schooled, some argue, if banging down the gymnasium door exposes you again to the culture--and the regulations--inside?

The Tolberts are also divided. Though Denise Tolbert says she supports her husband, she didn't join the lawsuit. "I don't want them back in the school at all," she says of Kristina and Josh, who used to attend public schools. Denise says she disapproved of what she describes as the sexually charged atmosphere and godless teachings of their middle school.

Kristina still has friends on the public school team, and she knows that more college recruiters would see her play for the high school. But she does have an outlet now for her abilities: the Lansing Crusaders, a team composed entirely of home schoolers, which plays other such teams as well as those of private schools. Kristina loves her teammates; the Tolberts keep a giant scrapbook full of home-school mementos, including photos of a beaming Kristina with the other Crusaders during their undefeated 1998-99 season. But Lansing is about an hour from Pinckney. "We had to buy a new car," says James Tolbert, who works two jobs so Denise can teach, "and we put a lot of miles on it."

Tolbert inquired about suing the school and was told it would cost $60,000. So he was excited when he heard about Safranek, the lawyer in Ann Arbor who has brought the current suit. The case is financed by the Thomas More Center for Law and Justice, where Safranek works; it's a religious-rights group founded by Thomas Monaghan, the conservative Catholic who sold Domino's Pizza last year for something like $1 billion.

The case has gone well so far. In August a state judge issued a stinging decision against the schools. She said that while participation in interscholastic athletics is a privilege, not a right, there's no reason taxpaying home-school families shouldn't enjoy that privilege. But it was only a preliminary ruling that allowed the case to proceed; the first full trial is set to begin in the spring.

Separately, some advocates pursued this issue in the Michigan political arena earlier this year. Some Republicans, including popular Governor John Engler, supported them. Engler called for home-schooler access to public teams in his state of the state address. But proponents of a bill forcing the change were no match for John Roberts, head of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, the nonprofit that writes the rules for athletic eligibility, rules adopted by almost every school. Now in his 14th year as executive director, Roberts wields enormous influence over high school sports in a state that takes them seriously. He warned that home schoolers could dislodge public school students from their teams. "If you don't want your son or daughter displaced," he told one sympathetic sports editor, "you have to stand up now." When the Engler-backed bill came up in the state senate in June, it got just three votes.

Safranek is hoping for a friendlier hearing in court. He's also willing to compromise. "We would follow some reasonable regulations," he says, such as a rule that home schoolers pass exams to be eligible. "But we shouldn't be shut out entirely."