I am a homeschool father of 4 always-homeschooled children aged 8 to 18, and husband of 22 years to Susan. Together we have published and edited the PA Homeschoolers newsletter for more than 13 years and together we wrote a book called The Three R's at Home which has helped many parents homeschool in flexible ways.
I also have many intellectual interests with a doctorate in education and with many professional publications including two articles about human memory which have appeared in Psychological Review and two articles about homeschooling which have appeared in Home School Researcher. My homeschool studies have shown that homeschoolers are succeeding and that a late start with reading or math does not hurt children.
I am also very interested in politics and have participated effectively in many legislative campaigns. My idea of effective political action is building institutions which make the world a better place.
But I have not always been a builder. As a high school student I was a complainer. I complained about the government. I complained about my school. In fact, my friends and I used to sit around every lunch time at school complaining about the hot lunches while we ate them! My idea, at that time, was that the world would be a better place if only the people in power had my opinions. I had no idea, then, that the world is formed by builders, not complainers.
When I was in college I was involved while my father organized a cooperative store in Pittsburgh. It was his way to make the world a better place. I helped with the store from the beginning. I heard the complaints about it, and they affronted me. I was trying to make it work. I had become a builder.
My heroes became other builders like my father. I admired Ken and Susan Webb, builders of an extremely beneficial Quaker summer camp where I worked three summers as a counselor. And I still admire my wife, founder of our homeschool and of our homeschooling newsletter.
The more I became involved with homeschooling, the more I could see it as a good institution. How much better for parents to start teaching their own children than to just sit around complaining about how bad the schools are!
When the prosecutions got so bad in Pennsylvania that we needed to work on a new law, I volunteered to be the one in my family to put in the necessary time. It took four years, thousands of dollars worth of phone calls, dozens of meetings and speeches, dozens of 9-hour round-trips to Harrisburg, but we did it. (The story of our legislative effort was told in my book Story of a Bill. Our law enabled everyone to homeschool if they could find an evaluator (a teacher, former teacher, or psychologist) who would certify that their children were receiving an appropriate education. Soon after the law passed I resigned my job as a school teacher so that I could travel Pennsylvania and make sure that parents everywhere in the state would be able to find an evaluator friendly to homeschooling.
From 1989 to the present I have led a successful campaign for recognition of homeschool high school diplomas in Pennsylvania. In the process I founded a non-profit corporation, Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency which provides legitimate diplomas and has encouraged many long-time homeschooling families to continue throughout high school.
From June 1991 to February 1994 I led the successful fight to keep Pennsylvania's beginning school age at 8 despite bills introduced by Governor Casey to lower the age to 6. At one point during the Casey Administration, both the House and Senate were controlled by Democratic Governor's own party. Yet we were able to bottle up those bills.
I am grateful to the opportunities that God has given me to try to make the world a better place.
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