Home Schooling - Institutions At War

Home Schooling. Let's start off by saying that home schooling is not just for the rich and powerful. Anyone can be home schooled. How do we know that? Because today in the United States there are over 1.2 million students being home schooled. It is doubtful that all of them are very rich.

Yes, home schooling does cost money but a child can be home schooled for as little as $1000 a year. Unless a family is truly poor this is not a large sum considering that comes out to about $3 a day. We spend more than that on our lunches at work.

So what about home schooling as far as it's benefits? Is it worth it? Do kids learn better? Are they smarter when they finish? Is there anything about home schooling that is bad?

Statistics show that students who are home schooled have better grades and actually learn more than students who go to public or private schools. Of course many people argue these statistics saying they are skewed and inaccurate and some say they are outright lies.

Why the battle?

Because the one truth that can't be argued is that home schooling is eating into public and private schools? pocket books. The growth rate for home schooling has been rising about 15 to 25% per year of late. This is about 20% of the students outside the government school system when you look at the raw numbers mentioned above. Another 250,000 children are expected to enter home schooling in the coming year.

The number of home schooling students do present a threat to government schooling, as they are finding that you don't have to hire super qualified teachers to get a good education for your child. And the truth is, an average family only spends about 10% of the per pupil cost that public schools spend on each child, which refutes the theory that you need to spend a lot of money to educate a child.

This does pose a significant economic threat to public schools since their school budgets depend on attendance. It is estimated that over $7 billion has been lost to public schools because of the number of children who are being home schooled.

Home schooling families are also a very powerful force in government. When a bill was introduced that all home school instructors be certified the home school community made such a loud noise that the bill was defeated by a vote of 424-1 when it came up in the house.

In an attempt to battle back, defenders of the public school system are fighting with every legal resource at their disposal. One of their tactics is the undermining and co-opting of the home schooling movement by establishing government home schooling programs which try to lure families by offering them free resources. Yes, the battle goes on and it won't be ending any time soon.

In the next article we'll go over exactly how home schooling works and how students earn their diplomas.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Home School
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