Today's genius is tomorrow's village idiot. Leonardo da Vinci agonized over multiplication and fractions. You can't do yer cipherin' on the coal scuttle no more, Abe Lincoln. If you aren't getting smarter, you're getting dumber. Communities plow billions of dollars into public schools in a quest to buy knowledge.
Educators whine that knowledge is just a bond referendum away.
Instead, infusions of money for classroom technology more likely help students search the Internet for pictures of Pamela Anderson Lee. Meanwhile, five different studies of standardized achievement test results, including one conducted by the State of Tennessee in 1988, have found that home-schooled students perform as well, or better than, public school students. The Wall Street Journal reported no significant difference between the test scores of home-schooled students taught by a parent who is or was a certified teacher, and those taught by a parent who was never certified. There is no significant difference between the test scores of home-schooled students taught by a college graduate, and those taught by a parent who did not attend college. It is as if the very act of sitting in a publicly-owned classroom knocks several points off a kid's ACT score.