Congress Reprimands CBS
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515
22 October 2003
Mr. Andrew Heyward,
President
CBS News
524 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019
Dear Mr. Heyward:
As members of Congress who either home school our own children or support the right of parents to
homeschool, we were deeply offended by the recent "Eye on America" dealing with homeschooling.
The October 13th segment, which aired on the CBS Evening News, implied a tragic murder-suicide
in rural North Carolina was somehow evidence of a "dark side" of home schooling, which justified
further government regulation of home education. The tenuous connection between this two-year-old
tragedy involving a single family, which happened to homeschool, and millions of law-abiding mothers
and fathers who successfully and safely educate their children at home everyday is absurd.
What your correspondent, Vince Gonzales, failed to mention in his segment was the numerous
child protection laws already exist that could have been used to safeguard the children in
question. In point of fact, North Carolina Social Services had repeated contact with the
family and had even removed the children from the home for a time. Despite numerous laws
and the involvement of State agencies, this tragedy occurred. Yet, Mr. Gonzales solution
is to shackle homeschool parents across the country with further laws and regulations that
would not have prevented the tragedy in question.
Today American parents, following a tradition that is as old as the Republic itself, are
teaching an estimated 1.6 to 2.0 million children at home. The number of families choosing
to home school is growing at an estimated annual rate of seven to fifteen percent. It is
worth noting that homeschooled children score, on average, 80 points higher on the SAT (an
aggregate of 1100) than does the overall population. And as Time Magazine noted in its
August 27th, 2001, issue, "Today Harvard admissions officers attend home-schooling conferences
looking for applicants, and Rice and Stanford admit home schoolers at rates equal to or higher
than those for public schoolers."
Rather than focusing on such a rare and remarkable case in a report on homeschooling, CBS
News could have done itself and its viewers a great service in reporting the success parents
have had in educating their children at home. Instead, you chose to take a handful of tragic
incidents and, from them, cast aspersions on the entire homeschool movement. Your report was
unfair and indicative of both bias and ignorance. We sincerely hope reporting of this kind is
the exception and not the rule at CBS.
Sincerely,
View Actual Letter
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Posted October 27, 2003
