A new federal survey tries to paint a picture of the typical home-school family, and it looks a lot like the home-school family of 10 years ago: two parents, white, one wage-earner, three or more children.
But home-schoolers defy the word typical. After all, they walked away from conventional schooling because they had atypical attitudes toward education.
Elise and Tom Yacura of Delray Beach are home-schooling three young children. But Elise, who is Episcopal, doesn’t like being stereotyped as “Bible-thumping and rifle-toting.” Francine Sherwood of Coral Springs took her son out of a Jewish day school and her daughter out of a public school.
These two families indicate a trend away from the home-schoolers of the past. Quality of education, their primary reason for home education, was also the number one reason given by those who answered the federal survey. The number two reason was religion; number three was learning environment. Researchers for the U.S. Department of Education interviewed about 17,000 families and released their results last month.
In past surveys, most home-schooling parents gave religious reasons for taking their children out of the schoolroom.
For both Sherwood and Yacura, quality education is paramount. Yacura loosely follows the guidelines of Core Knowledge, which is based on shared culture and literature. Sherwood surfs the Internet to find courses that fit the needs of her son and daughter.
Even the name “home-schooling” gives the wrong impression, Yacura says. They’re not even home that much.
“We’re in the car all the time. There’s P.E. on Monday, American Girl Club and algebra on Tuesday, the zoo and the park on Wednesday. Thursday’s open and they have 4-H on Friday.”
The study did not ask questions about the home-schooled students’ educational achievements. Anecdotally, home-schoolers have made headlines in recent years for winning spelling bees and other academic competitions. Home-schooling parents report their children are able to race ahead with studies because they are free of classroom distractions.
Yacura’s daughter, Danielle, 9, tested high in math and is slogging through what she calls “stinking fractions” and decimals to prepare for the algebra class she wants to take. When she and her brother, Christopher, 6, take a spelling test at the dining room table, she scores at sixth-grade level and he at fifth-grade level.
Sherwood acts more like an educational mentor to her children, Miriam and Daavid. She e-mails them educational sites and has become a walking encyclopedia of free or low-cost educational tools. Her latest find: a book that teaches physics through algebra and trigonometry for Daavid, 15, who prefers to learn math and science together. Sherwood is particularly happy about the progress made by Miriam, 12, who was foundering in math when she left school.
“She used to say, ‘I’m dumb in math.’ She has gotten her self-esteem back,” said Sherwood.
She is also the documentarian of their studies. State law requires home-schoolers’ work to be reviewed by a certified teacher once a year. Sherwood’s children’s work will be accredited by the North Atlantic Regional Schools, an online high school in Massachusetts.
The home-school universe was once dominated by fundamentalist Christian families. Religion remains a touchy subject. When Yacura found herself advising her children not to mention Halloween and Harry Potter at the Christian-dominated home-school support group, she decided it was time to find another support group. So last year she started her own, South County Home Schoolers, which has grown to 70 members.
As a Jew, Sherwood felt uncomfortable at some seminars at home-schoolers’ state conventions. The state group has begun identifying seminars that have strong Christian content. Sherwood avoids those and uses the convention as a source of curriculum information.
In Broward County, the switch from religion to quality of education was played out in the parent support groups. In 1997, a small group of parents split from the Broward County Parent Support Group (PSG) and formed their own group, HELPS.
The breakaway group objected to the PSG’s Christian orientation, even though PSG was formed by members of a Baptist congregation. PSG’s membership has stayed steady at 400-plus families since then, and HELPS has grown from a handful to 150 members.
The movement appears not to have grown as much as predicted. Two studies in the late 1990s predicted that there would be about a million home-schoolers in the year 2000.
The new federal study estimates that number at closer to 850,000.
Sherwood thinks home-schoolers would tend to shy away from poll-takers. In Florida, others have taken shelter under the umbrella of so-called “600 schools,” nominal private schools composed only of home-schoolers.
As studies trumpet that parental involvement is the key to student achievement, the home-schoolers just smile.
“If you are actively parenting, it’s a big commitment,” said Yacura. “But this is your job. I get up in the morning, and my day is spent with my children. What would I be doing, watching soap operas? This is tons more rewarding than going to an office.”
Lona O’Connor can be reached at lo’connor@su