Detroit homeschool advocate highlights solutions for families wanting to leave public-school system

Bernita Bradley credits her daughter with inspiring her to homeschool – although she had refused at first when Victoria had asked at age 11. 

“All these misconceptions that people have about homeschooling, I had a lot of those,” recalls Bradley, who founded the homeschool co-op and advocacy network Engaged Detroit. 

However, the COVID-19 pandemic and Victoria’s decision to drop out of high school at age 16 helped Bradley change her mind. 

“She was dropping out because teachers weren’t showing up for her,” she explained in a recent podcast episode with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “My daughter loves education, and so that was heart-wrenching to me, and you could see her feeling depleted because they weren’t having any support.”

Despite Bradley’s emailing the school several times, she never received the support requested for Victoria – causing Bradley to agree to try homeschooling her.

“If I could take back five of those years, back to when she was in fifth grade,” she said, “I would have homeschooled her if I knew what I knew now about homeschooling.”

Rapid growth over 5 years 

Bradley’s network started with 12 families, but it has grown to over 411 in just five years. 

“We were just a group of families meeting up virtually all the time,” Bradley noted of the association’s humble beginnings. “But then it became a group and then we labeled it Engaged Detroit, which was a name of a business that I was planning on having before we even started this, before the pandemic.” 

Even before she began homeschooling, Bradley had focused on helping parents advocate for their children at school.

“I’m showing them, here’s your rights, and know your rights, and here’s the policies behind it, and … this is what protects you to get the education your child needs,” she said. “So we were already kind of doing this, but I’m struggling at home at the same time.” 

The catalyst for change came with her daughter’s own request, according to Bradley. 

“I had started getting coaching for families online to understand what homeschooling looked like, and when my daughter asked me, I went to one of the coaches and was like, ‘Hey yeah, I need to be coached too because Victoria just told me she wants to homeschool.’” 

Engaged Detroit launched in September 2020 with a $25,000 VELA Meet the Moment Grant.  

The network’s success stemmed from directly supporting parents who then felt empowered to teach their children, Bradley argued. 

“It was that actual mindset of how to shift your mind from being a traditional school parent to a homeschool parent – knowing your policies, knowing your rights, knowing how to choose curriculum, understanding different grade levels – you know, what level math should my child be on at this age, things like that.” 

Ultimately, parents need to take initiative instead of relying on public schools to resolve their children’s educational challenges, Bradley noted. 

“The worst thing that schools keep telling us is give them time,” she said.  “They’ve been telling us give them time since my daughter was in fourth or fifth grade, and my daughter’s now 21 years old, so if I gave them all that time, my daughter would have been part of their failed statistic.” 

Addressing common homeschool stereotypes  

Bradley encourages prospective homeschoolers to address widespread misconceptions she used to believe herself.

“Homeschooling to me first looks like getting out of your own head,” she explains, “getting away from the mindset that you have a typical 7:45-to-3 school day because that is not what homeschooling looks like for the average family.”

Instead, much of homeschooling depends on empowering children to lead their own learning.

“If your child is in the second grade and they’re bored with second grade math,” she advises, “you can push them to third grade. You don’t have to keep them on this track, but then the reverse – if your child’s in third grade and they’re only doing second-grade reading, you can lower back and not feel bad.

“Don’t force them to be on third-grade level – help them to get what they need to get to the next level, and then they’ll advance quicker where they are.”

Additionally, Engaged Detroit’s coaches encourage parents to incorporate their child’s individual interests into homeschooling, according to Bradley.

“Our coaches literally talk to families about, hey, your child’s really inclined to music. If you’re noticing this about your child, how do you incorporate music and math and make it a love for math? How do you find the little things in your daily life to incorporate it in learning, understanding that a classroom should not just be science, math, English, history – it should be exploring life skills?”

Parents who overcome the public-school mindset begin to realize they have many alternatives, Bradley argues.

“You can find co-ops in your community. You can find libraries. Local churches have homeschooling groups. There are unique schools, like the aviator school in Ann Arbor. If homeschooling is not your niche, then there are other spaces.”

‘Parents are the first educator no matter what’

Even after schools reopened from the pandemic, homeschooling continued to rise nationwide – a trend Bradley believes will persist as more families discover it.

“Parents are the first educator no matter what – no matter whether they choose homeschooling or not,” she says, adding policymakers need to respect their input into educational matters.

“We’ve seen that happen during the pandemic where a lot of schools were saying, especially in Detroit, ‘Oh, let’s feed children, let’s get them food.’ … But there was no education happening, and parents were saying, ‘Look, I can feed my child. I need you to jump on a class with my child and make sure my child is actually learning.’”

By taking back responsibility for their children’s education, parents help “raise the bar” for public schools to recognize and address current systemic failures, Bradley argues.

“Leave any school that is not educating your child,” she warns. “I strongly believe in that. I stand beside it, and that’s the only way that our children are going to thrive is if we leave spaces that are doing harm to our children.”