But she and her husband, Joe, both public school teachers, are seriously thinking of training their two sons at home. As a social or political movement, home schooling might lack momentum. As a family option, though, it's gaining ground every year. That might seem modest in a pool of some 2,240,000 public school and 233,868 private school students, grades K-12. But the number, educational researcher Wendy Cullar says, nearly triples the total from just two years ago.
Doubters wonder what happens to sports teams and clubs, to friendships, to academic standards.
They wonder how students, and parents, will be accountable for their learning and whether staying home invites emotional abuse or isolation from diversity. Don't think of more empty seats, advocates say. Think of more well-furnished minds, more creative thinking and more closely knit families. Home education, Dave Exley says, is not out to replace or topple the public school system, not out to produce a generation of social dissidents or religious fanatics or to turn parents into tyrants. Home teaching came from the American tradition.