No School Like Home

The National Spelling Bee has become the premier showcase for homeschooled students of late. In the 2002 documentary Spellbound, which chronicles the 1999 Bee, contestants treated 12-year-old Bee veteran Georgie Thampy with precocious deference. Thampy, a homeschooler from Missouri, finished fourth in 1998 and third in 1999. He won in 2000, complementing his National Spelling Bee victory with a runner-up finish in the National Geography Bee. Another homeschooler, Sean Conley of Minnesota, won in 2001, by correctly spelling succedaneum, a replacement or substitute.

As the successes of homeschoolers continue to mount, so do their numbers. There are currently one to two million homeschoolers in the U.S. Twenty years ago there were 15,000. Yet, despite their successes and numbers, much of the public continues to view them with skepticism, as a part of a lunatic fringe sheltered by overprotective parents.

That is not the case, according to a new report from the Nevada Public Policy Institute. “Homeschoolers were once thought to consist primarily of families on the religious far-right or the far-left,” John Wenders [pictured] and Andrea Clements write. “Today, however, they tend to be middle of the road.”

The growth of homeschooling is a result of growing dissatisfaction with traditional public schools. “Spurred by a desire for a more individualized and challenging learning environment, U.S. parents are increasingly opting to homeschool their children,” according to the report. This trend has also seen the rise of charter schools and alternative educational methods, such as a Wisconsin district’s virtual high school. A virtual high school allows students to complete a curriculum online, without having to enter a classroom or a school.

Critics charge that homeschooling inhibits the social development of children and saps funds from the public education coffers. Both are false, according to the report.

Homeschooled children are often more active socially than their non-homeschooled peers. “Many envision homeschoolers as being isolated with their parents, having little cultural exposure, little opportunity to interact with other children, and otherwise having minimal contact with the world outside their homes…,” Wender and Clements write. “They have so many social and extracurricular activities that fitting everything into their schedule is a challenge.”

Many school districts allow homeschoolers to participate in after-school activities at public schools. Some districts allow homeschoolers to take adult education classes.

The study seeks to eliminate a common misconception and frequent criticism—that homeschoolers cost school districts money. “Home- and private school parents pay taxes but do not educate their children in public schools,” Wenders and Clements write.” “This either saves taxpayers money or makes additional tax money available for other uses, including bolstering the educational opportunities for children who remain in public schools.”

Enrollment often drives public education funding, and homeschooling decreases enrollment in public schools. Wenders and Clements summarize the critics’ argument:

To the extent that state aid to local schools is paid on a per-student basis, each student who attends an alternative school “takes” state aid from the traditional public school that this student would otherwise attend. This logic is flawed.

The authors point out that this arrangement has positive consequences for both traditional public schools and taxpayers. The “lost” state aid may be used to fund other education programs, thus relieving the burden on taxpayers. In addition, the “lost” state aid relieves the financial burden on school districts, who often complain of insufficient funding.

“The bottom line is that home- and private schooling is a ‘win-win’ arrangement for both taxpayers and individual public schools districts,” Wenders and Clements write.

Larry Scholer is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.