Homeschooling

Prevalence

According to the Home School Legal Defense Association (2004), the number of homeschooled students has been on the rise over the past two decades. In the 2000–2001 school year, an estimated 1.5 to 1.9 million students, grades K–12, were homeschooled. Researchers believe that the numbers have been increasing between 7% and 15% per year. Therefore, it is estimated that 1.7 to 2.2 million students were homeschooled during the 2001–2002 [Page 246]school year. Using a 15% increase per year, an estimated 2.6 to 3.3 million students will be homeschooled in the 2004–2005 school year. To help put things into perspective, there are approximately 49 million students currently enrolled in grades K–12 in the U.S. public school system. In a 2001 study on homeschooling, Bielick and colleagues (2001) found the following demographic information:

• 75.3% of these students were white, non-Hispanic.
• 61.6% of these students were from homes with three or more children in the household.
• 80.4% of these students were from two-parent families.
• 63.6% of these students lived in households with family annual incomes of $50,000 or less.

The researchers also asked the parents why they chose to homeschool their child, and the top three reasons were that the parents felt they could provide their children with a better education at home, religious reasons, and the neighborhood school was a poor learning environment.

Current Trends in Homeschooling

Different approaches to homeschooling include (Kochenderfer, 2003):

• School-at-home (the most familiar)—The teacher (or parent) orders a curriculum set with all of the materials and supplies included, and follows structured lesson plans.
• Unit studies—The teacher and student find an area of interest for the student and work the area of interest into every subject (e.g., math, reading, science, history).
• “Relaxed” or “eclectic”—This is the most used homeschool method. This approach includes elements of all the other approaches.
• “Unschooling”—Students learn from their own life experiences; they learn by following their interests. They do not follow the typical school schedule, and there are no formal lessons. Students who participate in the unschooling approach do not do as well on formal assessments compared to other students who are homeschooled using a different homeschool approach.
• Online or Internet homeschooling—homeschooling also appears on the Internet. Online, homeschoolers can find virtual tutors, private distance learning schools, homeschool support academies, Online curriculum programs, and much more.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Homeschooling

According to the literature, there are advantages and disadvantages associated with homeschooling. Some advantages include:

• Parents are able to spend quality time with their child.
• Parents can control what their child is learning.
• Parents can be more involved in teaching their child their values and ways of life.
• Parents can provide their child with protection from negative social situations.
• Parents can give their child one-on-one attention and extra help in areas that their child may be struggling in.
• Parents can adapt their teaching style to match their child's style of learning, personality, and needs.
• Parents have the pleasure of working with each other to educate their child.

Although there are many advantages to homeschooling, there are also some disadvantages, with the most common disadvantage being financial. Most two-parent families rely on a two-person income; however, because one parent must be home at least part of the day to educate the child, the family suffers a loss of income; also, the homeschooling curricula itself can be expensive. Other disadvantages include (Kochenderfer & Kanna,

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