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RTE Episode 7: What’s Homeschooling Gotta do with Black Folks? featuring Dr. Cheryl Fields Smith
Homeschooling in the United States is generally perceived as a white, middle-class, religious-based schooling phenomenon (Fields-Smith, 2015). National estimates put the number of homeschooled students at 3% of the population, about two million students (Redford, Battle, and Bielick, 2017). Black parents are increasingly homeschooling and in the last 15 years, their numbers have doubled from 103,000 to about 220,000. Black parents’ reasons for electing to homeschool are increasingly related to issues of racism, segregated schools, and a lack of culturally relevant curriculum.
We are joined this week by Dr. Cheryl Fields Smith, associate professor at the University of Georgia, Mary Frances Early College of Education. A former elementary school teacher in Connecticut, her research interests include family engagement and homeschooling among Black families. Her dissertation explored family engagement from the perspective of 22 Black middle-class families. Later, she received a Spencer Foundation Grant to conduct a two-year study focused on homeschooling among 46 Black families. From this study, Dr. Fields-Smith has published several journal articles and chapters, which among them includes the first empirically-based publication to focus exclusively on Black homeschool families. Her research on homeschooling among Black families has most recently been featured in a PBS NewsHour report and the Atlantic.
Dr. Cheryl Field Smith recently published the book, Exploring Single Black Mothers’ Resistance Through Homeschooling, which expands on contemporary Black homeschooling as a form of resistance among single Black mothers. It corroborates many of the issues that plague the education of Black children in America, including discipline disproportionality, frequent referrals to special education services, teachers’ low expectations, and the marginalization of Black parents as partners in traditional schools. This book challenges stereotypical characterizations of who homeschools and why.
You can learn more about her organization called Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES) on Facebook and the website is http://www.blackfamilyhomeschool.org/. You can also find her on Twitter @drcherylfields.
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By Madison and Fawziah
5
1818 ratings
Homeschooling in the United States is generally perceived as a white, middle-class, religious-based schooling phenomenon (Fields-Smith, 2015). National estimates put the number of homeschooled students at 3% of the population, about two million students (Redford, Battle, and Bielick, 2017). Black parents are increasingly homeschooling and in the last 15 years, their numbers have doubled from 103,000 to about 220,000. Black parents’ reasons for electing to homeschool are increasingly related to issues of racism, segregated schools, and a lack of culturally relevant curriculum.
We are joined this week by Dr. Cheryl Fields Smith, associate professor at the University of Georgia, Mary Frances Early College of Education. A former elementary school teacher in Connecticut, her research interests include family engagement and homeschooling among Black families. Her dissertation explored family engagement from the perspective of 22 Black middle-class families. Later, she received a Spencer Foundation Grant to conduct a two-year study focused on homeschooling among 46 Black families. From this study, Dr. Fields-Smith has published several journal articles and chapters, which among them includes the first empirically-based publication to focus exclusively on Black homeschool families. Her research on homeschooling among Black families has most recently been featured in a PBS NewsHour report and the Atlantic.
Dr. Cheryl Field Smith recently published the book, Exploring Single Black Mothers’ Resistance Through Homeschooling, which expands on contemporary Black homeschooling as a form of resistance among single Black mothers. It corroborates many of the issues that plague the education of Black children in America, including discipline disproportionality, frequent referrals to special education services, teachers’ low expectations, and the marginalization of Black parents as partners in traditional schools. This book challenges stereotypical characterizations of who homeschools and why.
You can learn more about her organization called Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES) on Facebook and the website is http://www.blackfamilyhomeschool.org/. You can also find her on Twitter @drcherylfields.