The ABCs Of Home Schooling

(CBS)  For a growing number of American students, "homework" is two words, not one, and a classroom is the one place they're not likely to be, because when it comes to education, for these students and their parents, there's no place like home. Tracy Smith spells it out for us:

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On a late summer morning in Brooklyn, New York, a mother walks her son to school. It's a common routine, but this one has an uncommon twist. The classroom is a coffee shop. There's only one student. And the instructor? Mom herself.

And what kind of teacher is she?

"She's really a cool teacher," says 14-year-old Tau. "And kind of a cool parent, too."

P. Aurora Robinson began home-schooling her son Tau two years ago. She wanted to teach him herself because, she says, she knows him best. So together they hit the books, and then they hit the road.

It's called "home schooling," but how much time did they spend at home?

"Very little," Robinson laughed, "'cause I don't like staying in one spot. I took him out of the country to Zimbabwe. We went to Canada. I mean, we've gone as many places as I possibly can take him so that he can see that learning doesn't have to relegated to one little spot in one little room at one little time."

"It sounds like a wonderful ideal," Smith said, "but you did have to sacrifice?"

"Of course," Robinson said.

Robinson's career was as a tenure-track professor at Drury University in Missouri. She gave it up, started living off her savings, and moved the family back to her hometown in New York. She says she did it to save her son from teachers and classmates who did not see in him the young man that she saw.

"Here's a child who takes cello, who play soccer, who's a boy scout," she said. "And they wanted him to be a thug and wear his pants under his behind, because of the color of his skin."

Smith asked Tau what public school in Missouri like for him.

"It wasn't that good," he said. "Everybody was really mean. There was lots of stereotypes put on me."

Thomas Morrow, like Robinson, was wary of bullying when he chose to home-school his kids.

"As a child, you're bullied because you haven't learned yet how to behave properly to one another."

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But Morrow (left) says his main reason was something far more fundamental: academics.

"It's very difficult for me to see how an institutional education can compete with home education, it's not a fair competition," he said. "[An] institutional-educated child is one of 30 kids facing one teacher. Home-educated child is typically one of one, two, or three kids facing one teacher.

"The publicly-schooled child, that teacher probably didn't know them before they showed up one day in late August. The home-schooled child, their teacher knows them intimately."

For Morrow, home education is not just a lifestyle, it's also a livelihood. He's a former Fortune 500 executive who launched his own company about three years ago: Home School Inc.. Located outside Chicago, it supplies educational materials and teaching assistance to 47,000 families around the world.

That number, he says, will soon skyrocket.

Morrow says home schooling is a multi-billion dollar industry. "About a $1.5 billion for materials and about $3.5 billion for services - mostly tutoring, instructors, that kind of thing. So it's a big market."

And Morrow says Home School Inc.'s multi-million dollar business is expected to grow "quite a bit."

He has reason to be optimistic: An estimated two million children are now home-schooled in the U.S. And there's an average annual increase of seven percent, according to the Department of Education's most recent survey.

Calvert Education Services in Baltimore, Md., the granddaddy of home-school mail order - it's where Aurora Robinson got her materials - sends its wares to every continent except Antarctica.

Calvert began more than a century ago sending out curricula to homebound students during a flu epidemic.

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Calvert CEO Jean Halle (left, with Smith), says it's like "Christmas in August" when Calvert's so-called "school-in-a-box" - complete with pencils and supplies - arrives at the start of home school years. It costs about $700 dollars. For a couple thousand more, kids can enroll in a "virtual classroom" on the Internet, where they communicate with teachers and other students.

There's also a home school blog. This is not your grandmother's home-schooling.

Not Benjamin Franklin's home-schooling either. Long before "virtual classrooms," Franklin and many others who signed the Declaration of Independence were, in fact, home-schooled.

"You can trace it all the way to before there was an America, before there was a United States," Morrow said. "Home education was the rule, until the 1850s, when we began to see the public schooling movement began.

"Shortly thereafter, the states began to pass what are called truancy and mandatory attendance laws. When those laws were passed, it became illegal to home school.

But by the 1960s, anti-establishment groups were routinely breaking those laws. And thirty years later, after the laws were overturned, fundamentalist Christians began home-schooling in droves.

But these days, Aurora Robinson paints a different picture of the movement.

"I mean, the average person, when you say you're going to home school your child, thinks you're a Bible-thumping fanatic. And that's not true."

The truth, said Robinson, is that home-schooling has a new face. It's on the rise among non-white minorities - an estimated twenty percent of home educators, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. And she says they do it not for religion, but because they're unhappy with public schools.

"More parents see it as a mainstream option," Halle said. "If you go to a college orientation, they're going to talk to you about home-school students and how they're welcomed and encouraged to be part of the program."

The proof is at Princeton University, where the 2002 valedictorian was a home-schooler, and where the college Web site has a special section for home school applicants.

But at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, associate admissions director John Birney says fielding those applications can be tricky.

"When it comes to home schooling students versus traditional, I think the eye becomes a bit more critical because some of the required pieces, like the transcript, which is most important, isn't always in that file," Birney said.

So how stringent are standard? What is, Smith asked, some parent decides he wants his kid to just learn Rolling Stone lyrics?

"The states have some oversight," Halle said. "And it varies by state. But they are going to look for you to give your student a certain education and for you to provide proof that you're doing that."

States do regulate home-schooling, some more stringently than others. And no state requires parents to be certified. But John Birney wonders if that should change.

"When you're looking at that applicant file and you know there's been a certification behind it, almost like an accredited school, you're a bit more comfortable with the curriculum because you know it's past an accreditation stage," he said.

Thomas Morrow is less skeptical: "The statistics demonstrate that even uncertified parents still do a better job educating, as measured by standardized tests. Typically, a home-educated child is testing two grades ahead, once they're in middle school."

But even if, statistically, home-schoolers are better test-takers, critics say they sometimes lag behind on a lesson not in any textbook: how to interact with other kids.

"Well, I think the piece that they're missing is the socialization that a traditional high school absolutely provides to all students who attend that school," Birney said.

Robinson took issue with the worry some parents have that home-schooled kids don't socialize with other kids.

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"Oh, they must be insane," she said. "We have home school associations, similar to the PTA. The difference is it's like having the exploded version of a play date!"

And Tau is about to get even more chances to socialize. He's headed back to a traditional school. He was recently admitted to a competitive New York City high school for the arts, and starts this year.

"You're willing to let him go back into conventional school now?" Smith asked Robinson.

"You know, I've gotta also let him grow," she said. "I've gotta let him make choices. He's making a choice."

[jt102493]

truewords: "How many of you actually personally know two or more home schooling families?"

Me! Me! I represented a lot of them in delinquency cases in juvenile court!


Posted by jsilver2th at 04:29 AM : Sep 15, 2008

Nonsense, shenanigans, hogwash and horseradish. If someone doesn''t show up for school and doesn''t, by the laws of their state, have homeschool paperwork filled out, they are NOT homeschooled, they are TRUANT. If they are, BY THE LAWS OF THEIR STATE, homeschooling, you most likely are seeing neither hide nor hair of them. So the answer to that question, for you, would be - "No, I don''t know two or more families that homeschool."

[segnenlea]

My husband and I pulled our twin daughters out of first grade last November because of school issues. Honestly, we have never really looked back. They have already reached 3rd grade material and are reading at a 4th grade level within just 10 months. They are in a homeschool group ( not christian based mind you, just strictly homeschool play group), we have a different fair each month ~ geography, photography, science, history, etc.. ~~. We have field trips. Our kids socialize with other children that go to regular school also. However, they have better manners, better language and know more stuff than public school kids do. They even keep up with a fake checkbook so that they know how to balance them. Just because homeschool parents dance to a different drum does not mean that we are all 1. meth addicts hiding somewhere ( I didn''t appreciate that remark at all), 2. Christian fanatics (we are pagans actually) or 3. think we are better and know better than others. We are just willing to sacrifice so that our kids have the best education and environment possible. Personally, I like the fact that I don''t have to worry about guns, knives or bombs in our school. Not since we are at home.

[heyvern3]

One would think that John Birney would be able to come up with a more original comment about homeschoolers than that old saw about socialization. The same issue is brought up at every turn by those opposed to, and ignorant of, the homeschool process. While I don''t know what nationwide statistics would tell us, I can speak for our local homeschool support group. Through community service projects, support group events, and other activities, our students engage in meaningful, ongoing interaction with people of all ages. Most significantly, we have noticed that this produces graduates who are eminently capable of functioning in an adult world. Isn''t this what we are training them for? I wonder sometimes how socially prepared public school students are after they have spent their teenage years primarily with several hundred other teenagers.

[twig221]

I Home schooled my sons for 9 years. They went to a Private high school in our town. I did all the teaching. We did not use co-ops or anything group taught. When they went to school every teacher commented on how confident they were and how social they were with the other students. They also were able to write better and more clearly with less instruction than any of the other students in their classes.
There are many reasons to teach at home. Ours was not to isolate or indoctrinate. Avoiding the middle school years seemed to serve them both very well. I also came to really know my children. We may be the lucky exception but it was a choice I would make again.
Our friends who are teachers in both private and public schools thought we were crazy at first. After a couple of years they were impressed and often told us our boys were a pleasure to talk to and be around.
It can be a great experience for some kids and for some parents.

[chare92]

This is an EXCELLENT article - the thing I do NOT agree with is the SOCIALIZATION ignorance that people continue to have about homeschooling. The last time I checked you do NOT go to school to socialiaze. You go to get an education. You can get socialization after school, before school, at sports, music lessons, in your neighborhood, in your community, in your church, in your organizations - there are so many options.

We homeschool our children and it''s for 2 reasons. We homeschool because of religious convition/beliefs AND we homeschool because we do not want our children in the PS system.

I come from a long line of PS educators. They are fine with us homeschooling, because each family has to do what is best for their family. Remember, our founding fathers? MANY of them were homeschooled and MANY colleges are recruiting homeschoolers, today.

[segnenlea]

My husband and I started homeschooling our seven year old twin daughters in November of 2007. We pulled them out of first grade because they were constantly sick. They constantly cried not to go to school since the kids were mean to them ( bullies picking on smaller children) and the teachers did nothing. We tried everything from speaking with the teachers to speaking with the principal. We even spoke with the superintendant of our school system. We have just started our first "real year" of homeschooling and I wouldn''t change it for anything. Yes, we have bad days, but regardless, it is worth it. Our kids are happier, healthier and are working on 3rd grade material. They are reading at a 5th grade level. No, homeschooling is not for everyone. It takes work, it takes commitment to be there for your child, it requires sacrifice. For us, it was worth it. We are not christians and it was harder to find material that was not christian based, but we did it. We have pulled together a wonderful curriculum for our kids. To us, it is worth every penny, every sacrifice that we make to make their future the best it can be.

[stephymomma]

You represented some homeschool families in juvenile court...how many public school families did you represent? Every family has problems no matter how they are schooled.

[krystan2]

I am an atheist homeschooler in a blue state, and honestly there are plenty of us around. It takes a little doing, but there were several choices for good non-religious curriculum. I put together some curriculum myself too, and no I am not an certified teacher. Teachers are certified to teach a room full of students the state-approved curriculum. Totally different than facilitating the curiosity of a few kids you know really well. And socialization is not really an issue. We have co-ops and meet-ups with several groups per week, and they play with neighborhood schoolchildren on weekends. It''s too bad there are so many misconceptions out there about homeshooling.

[bob_robertso]

One wonders, reading this article, if the writer did any back-story or research at all first.

Did they look at the materials available on www.johntaylorgatto.com for the goals and motivations of the people who designed the public schools?

How about www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html for comparison of what has happened to "education" after a century and a half of coercive "schooling"?

Worried about the fundamentalists teaching their kids creationism? Well, the public schools are a "target of opportunity", subject to "public opinion", and creationism is getting inserted into supposed "science" classes there too.

Atheists are just as motivated to remove their kids from the public schools as the fundamentalists are, with the kids forced to recite "One nation, under God, indivisible..." every morning (and that''s just the beginning).

[itgranny]

Last year my 14 year old failed algebra and we had to shuffle classes and he''s missing a computer elective course needed for graduation. I looked into home schooling to try to keep him in line with the rest of his class. Wow, I was in for an education! First, finding something that wasn''t christian-based curriculum was kind of a challenge. Nextly, trying to find a class that they would actually allow to have the credits transfered was another challenge. My small school was less than helpful in finding solutions either.

I did finally find a state accredited online program but had to definately go through some hoops first.