Home Schooling

An Accelerating Trend

Both approaches had early adherents, and by the mid1980s, about 15,000 families were home schooling in the United States. It was illegal in thirty states, but as a result of aggressive lobbying and numerous court rulings, by 1993 it was legal in all fifty states, with varying degrees of regulation.

During this time the majority of home school families were conservative Christians, but academic success and positive media attention encouraged others to join them. For example, in 2000 home school students won first, second, and third place in the U.S. National Spelling Bee. One home school family received national attention after its three sons were accepted into Harvard. Numerous resources had been developed for home school families including curriculums, local support [Page 595]groups, state and national associations, magazines, and seminars. http://Amazon.com, an online book retailer, listed more than 200 books on home schooling.

Through the 1990s, several studies indicated that home school students typically scored between 15 and 30 percentile points higher on standardized tests than their public school peers. In 2000, Stanford University accepted 24 percent of its home school applicants, more than double its overall acceptance rate, and many colleges and universities were reviewing their admissions policies to make them more home school–friendly. By 2002, the movement had spread to Japan and several western European countries and represented a wider range of political, socioeconomic, and religious viewpoints. More than twenty-four countries had national associations of home school families, and smaller associations by specific ethnic or religious affiliations were common in the United States and Canada. Jacqueline Luffman, a Canadian statistician, noted that “home schooling has shed its image as a social and educational aberration” (Luffman 1998).

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