Support for home-schoolers can pay off for all students

As 47 million children return to public schools, some 2 million are staying home to get their instruction. In nearly every state, the number of children being educated in their homes is rising about 10% a year.

The growth reflects a vast broadening in the types of families that embrace home schooling. The stereotype of home-schoolers as religious separatists or the offspring of New Age seekers has not been true for years. Now, though, local home-schooling organizations report that about 10% of their families are black or Hispanic.


The growing diversity among families that teach their children themselves is linked to the spreading popularity of the school choice movement. Parents like having the power to choose the educational setting that best serves their children's needs.

Yet instead of accepting — even welcoming — the valuable role home-school supporters can play in increasing choices, too many traditional educators are setting up roadblocks. Some states impose excessive paperwork demands on home-schooling parents, even when their children appear to be flourishing academically. Many school districts deny home-schooled children the opportunity to participate in music and sports activities at local schools.

Such moves can needlessly deprive public schools of valuable alliances with taxpayers and advocates of quality education.

Several proven ways can help more states and school districts reach out to home-schooling parents. Among them:

•Funding online teaching. The Florida Virtual School is a public school that conducts classes over the Internet. Students include not only home-schoolers but also students looking for courses their local schools don't offer or more flexible class schedules.

• Reducing burdensome paperwork. Maine did so in May as one of several states that acceded to home-schooling parents' requests to be treated more like families in private schools. In recent years, Oregon, Arkansas and Arizona have loosened onerous rules aimed at home-schoolers.

•Letting home-schoolers join school activities. In July, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a bill requiring the state's 501 school districts to open sports teams and other extracurricular activities to home-schoolers. The measure, which goes to the state senate this fall, reflects a national trend granting home-schooled students use of some public-school services.

Those critical of home schooling argue that parents often fall short as competent teachers. To date, though, no evidence demonstrates a significant problem of home-schooled children receiving poor educations. In fact, research suggests home schooling can be very effective.

Families choosing home schooling provide the close parental involvement that students need to succeed academically. Supporting that choice benefits children, their parents and local school districts.

Home is no place for school
By Dennis L. Evans

The popularity of home schooling, while not significant in terms of the number of children involved, is attracting growing attention from the media, which create the impression that a "movement" is underway. Movement or not, there are compelling reasons to oppose home teaching both for the sake of the children involved and for society.

Home schooling is an extension of the misguided notion that "anyone can teach." That notion is simply wrong. Recently, some of our best and brightest college graduates, responding to the altruistic call to "Teach for America," failed as teachers because they lacked training. Good teaching is a complex act that involves more than simply loving children. Research on student achievement overwhelmingly supports the "common-sense" logic that the most important factor affecting student learning is teacher competency. While some parents may be competent to teach very young children, that competence will wane in more advanced grades as the content and complexity increases.

But schools serve important functions far beyond academic learning. Attending school is an important element in the development of the "whole child." Schools, particularly public schools, are the one place where "all of the children of all of the people come together." Can there be anything more important to each child and thus to our democratic society than to develop virtues and values such as respect for others, the ability to communicate and collaborate and an openness to diversity and new ideas? Such virtues and values cannot be accessed on the Internet.

The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship. It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents.

One of the strengths of our educational system is the wide range of legitimate forms of public, private or parochial schooling available for parental choice.

With that in mind, those contemplating home teaching might heed the words of the Roman educator, Quintilian (A.D. 95). In opposing home schooling, he wrote, "It is one thing to shun schools entirely, another to choose from them."

Dennis L. Evans directs doctoral programs in education leadership at the University of California, Irvine.