Why is homeschooling popular in the US?

Question

Given the population fo the United States, I would assume there must be a range of schools to choose from (i.e religious, private, special needs and various educational philosophies). Why do you feel you need to homeschool?

I am looking for the reasons people homeschool. links with statistics would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Here are the top 3 reasons:

1) To provide religious training with education = 31%

2) Parents are worried about negative influences of "bad" children in public schools = 30%

3) Parents think the public schools provide poor education = 16%

All the rest are less than 10%

This question was asked ONLY of home schooling parents.

Answer 2

One large reason is school safety. Many schools have metal detectors because of drug and gang violence.

One of the original reason was forced bussing, but that's gone now.

Cost of private schools is way to high. When I was a kit it was $24 a month and today it's thousands a year.

Getting them up and off to school. Many kids won't take school buses. Many people can't afford to use school buses.

Quality of eduction is an issue. The school systems in America suck and that is no lie and eveyrone wants to pretend like it's not an issue.

Parents can maintain better control over their own kids. They can still spank them!

The statistical facts do show another picture. The top 10% of most integrated school systems show the Perians and Asians to be the top students.

Whites are now in the lower 70%

Blacks are in the lower 50%

Hispanics are in the lower 30%

This does indicate a motivated person can do well in schools.

That's the key word. Motivated person.

Which gets us back to discipline and the home. If, big IF, the parents are doing their job right at home the child is more motivated.

As for the "education system sucks" part of that comes from politics.

The US is the greatest country in the world, everything we do is perfect. Everyone else bows to us. Say anthing different and you will have parents with American Flags going to school board meetings to ask why COMMUNISTS are teaching in the high schools.

It's the Europeans who made the slave trade. It's those terrible British Colonists who accept it, but once we got free of this and became true Americans we abolished it.

That's called putting a spin or re-writing history. No one wants to say anything otherwise.

Of course when you go to college you re-learn all this.

Laws. Three branches of Goverment, Bills are put forth in Congress, debated, amended and then sent to a happy President who signs them into law.

No talk of PACs, shelving in committee, partisan politics, trading projects for votes. None of that dirty stuff is discussed in Public Schools.

Home schooling is something parents and kids can do together. I know if I was doing it, we'd have to work hard together when it came to advanced Algebra or Differential Equations!

Answer 3

I think the first link is the report Douglas Z was trying to find. It's somewhat dated (1999), but probably still fairly accurate, as far as the information you're wanting. If you look under "Parent's Reasons for Homeschooling", I think you'll find what you're looking for. You might also look around the NHERI website (second link) for other homeschooling statistics.

You are right, there is a wide variety of educational choices in the US and homeschooling is just one of them. However, for many families (especially with multiple children) some of those options are prohibitively expensive (private schools START at around $4,000 per year, per child).

Personally, we homeschool because our (gifted) son was not being challenged in the public school (their idea of a gifted program was to require MORE work, not more CHALLENGING work). I can homeschool my child for a lot less than the cost of a private school education and the quality is just as good and perhaps even better than some. I also like the fact that I get to spend so much time getting to know my kids - their likes and dislikes, their friends, their interests, ...

I was staying home with our younger son when we chose to homeschool, so we were used to living on one income. We have found we really didn't need the second income to get the things that are important to us. Unfortunately, this is not an option for everyone.

Answer 4

Homeschooling gives students the time to really grow at their own pace. There is so much violence in the schools nowadays and most parents can't afford to pay the high tuition rates plus uniforms, and other costly expenses at the private schools.

Most adults want their children to be able to learn about the Lord and most public schools won't allow them to be taught that in the average classroom and they ban prayer too. There was a situation where a twelfth grader wasn't allowed to graduate from a public school because he prayed and gave the glory to the Lord.

At least at home the parents know where their kids are and what they are doing. In other school situations there are too many kids to one teacher. Kids are allowed to do whatever they want and get away with it. Homeschooling is a great way to learn and grow in many ways like mentioned plus many more.

www.homeschooling.org or .com is a great link to go to. I will be checking into others as well. I am homeschooled and it is the best thing that could ever have been done for me. I am 12 and about to begin the 11th grade.

Answer 5

only based on the population of the USA your assumption would seem correct but you must remember that population is spread across an area that is roughly 5.9 million sq miles or 9.6 million sq km.
that means many people live in very rural areas where there is no choice of schools or philosophies.
other areas have very limited choice and maybe not what a particular family is looking for.
cities and dense population areas will have more choice but the expense may be horrendous

of course there are many other reasons people homeschool (almost as many reasons as there are homeschoolers) but you did question based on the population size

Answer 6

www.NHERI.org

Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute will be able to answer all of your questions.

Home schooling is only popular among those that understand it. They are either veteran parents of graduates from home-education, current parents of home-students, students themselves, or friends and family of those that are involved in the process of home-education.

It is not widely accepted among those that do not know what it is like.

It is popular with ME because I know it is the right thing to do for my children. It has grown in popularity with ME due to 18+ years of experience. My children are great students. They are awesome. I have grown to know them very well. They know me very well. My students have proven to me that home education is a wonderful option.

When a student learns how to read and how to compute sums they are well on their way to knowing HOW to do any academic work. My children are capable of teaching themselves. I don't mean teaching each other but I do mean self-teaching. Once they learn how to think and how to read and follow directions they can take a math book and independently figure out how to do all of the work without my assistance.

Most parents are quite adept at knowing what their own child has as special needs. It doesn't take a trained professional to know everything!!!

We don't have a problem with trained instructors teaching at a college level. We have learned that the basics learned in kindergarten through 12th grade are best done at home.

Many people seem to think that our students miss out on the social-fundementals of dances, proms, and other socials. That is funny to us because we think that they have no idea about what *they* themselves are missing.

Another reason that we like home-schooling so much is that we have so many friends and wonderful acquaintances that also homeschool. They are smart, kind, helpful, trustworthy, etc.... Good people!!!!

Barb

Answer 7

I "home-schooled" my son in his 8th grade year with the help of his local public school district. They had a little know school within the district called "Options" school. They provided the text books, work books, and suggested curriculum. We met once a week with a teacher for about 2 hours to review the assignments he had completed and to give him quizzes and chapter tests that I had not given him that week. He was allowed to take three of his classes at the local Jr. High. This allowed him to continue to play saxophone for the Symphonic Band and to play bass guitar for the Jazz Band, and to take 8th grade science at the school because they had the lab equipment.
This worked well for us because he learns differently than they teach at that Jr. High. He did not have to do PE, so that saved time (he skate boarded A LOT!!!) and I did not assign "busy work" homework. I worked right out of normal text books from chapter 1 to the end, without a lot of random skipping around. This worked out so much better for him. Some days he did no school work at all, and other days he had to do nothing but school work to catch up. Sometimes he worked a little at a time on each subject. There was a lot more flexibility with what was due by when in a given week. It cost us nothing since it was sponsored by the local school district.

Answer 8

Yes, there are several different types of schools to choose from, it is not from a lack of choices that we choose homeschooling.
The reasons why parents teach their children at home are as varied as the people that do it.
I "feel" I "need" to homeschool because:
1. I want to
2. I can
3. I prefer my children have a quality education
4. I want my children to value our family
I could go on and on, but that's a start.

Answer 9

For the record, I'm an agnostic atheist, I came to be one after questioning my belief system of 30+ years. As to your question about why it is growing so popular in the U.S, there are many reasons, probably the biggest is that many of us (I don't' include everyone) do not trust that the government knows what is best for our children. There is a need for schools, but not everyone 'needs' to use them and so we choose not to. However, our taxpayer dollars still go to the public schools and they are there for our convenience should we need or decide to use them...Freedom of choice.

Why do you think that we should need to have reasons or statistics? Do we not live in a free country? Why should adults be the only ones entitled to that freedom? Homeschooling is in the range for school choice...thank goodness, why not choose it? Compulsory public education is only a couple of hundred years old, people somehow progressed to where we are now without the need for compulsory public schools. I believe that many homeschoolers feel this way even if we don't agree on necessarily the 'why'.

My children do have a choice to home educate and/or go to school, they choose to home educate. We choose home education because it is our right as humans to decide how we want to raise our children and how we choose to live our lives.

We do not think that homeschool parents or students are better but they most certainly are equal too. Of course, there are bad teachers but for the most part, they have a desire to help children and many need them...mine don't, they're enjoying learning from home. We're not worried about other children being a bad influence on ours but we don't believe that children learn how to properly act in society by interacting with their peers all day.

We choose to have our children and we want what is best for them and because we know it works, and because we see them interact greatly with people of all ages, and because they love learning, and because we enjoy being with them and they with us, and we believe that the hours of spent in school are a waste of time, and we want freethinkers who do not conform to what society deems best and lastly; we believe in the strength of the family and therefore, we choose to homeschool.

Homeschooling ROCKS! And we really don't care if anyone doesn't think that it does. When we're on our way to the beach, and see the kids on the school bus, my children don't say "Oh ma-aan." They feel sorry for the kids on the bus who have to spend 6-8 hours learning (most of which is wasted on waiting for others to be respectful by quieting themselves and taking attendence) what they can learn in 3 and 1/2 hours and be free to do whatever the rest of the day.

Answer 10

Homeschooling is just a benefit of our individual liberties. Our founding fathers considered education to be one of the most vital qualities needed to keep a society free (hence why it is still and probably always will be one of the major politically decisive issues).

I can't answer as to why people choose to homeschool their children, their answers can be as varied as you can possibly imagine, but I can say that they don't need to "feel" a need to do it. They can simply choose to do so because they are free to make that decision.