More homework
Published August 19, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, August 18, 2014.
For growing numbers of North Carolina students, there’s no place like home.
The number of home schools in North Carolina has doubled over the last 10 years, with the number of children enrolled in home schools topping those enrolled in private schools for the first time.
Approximately 98,172 home-schoolers were registered with the state in 2013-14, according to the Office of Non-Public Education, versus 95,768 in private schools. That total reflects a 14.3 percent increase for home schools over the previous year — and a 27 percent spike over the year before that. Only 809 children were home-schooled in 1985, the first year they were allowed.
In Guilford County, 2,277 home schools are registered with the state. Neighboring Rockingham County has 624. Wake County boasts the largest number of home schools in North Carolina with 5,706.
Educators link part of the recent surge to the controversial Common Core curriculum that state lawmakers recently axed for reasons that seemed more political than substantive. For others, the trend might simply be a sign of the economy: the prosperity that allows some parents the option of taking a break from working outside of the home, or the unemployment that keeps a family from sending a child back to private school.
Home schools can offer some clear advantages. For example, home school parents have the time to get to know each child’s special needs and to approach each of those needs using whatever learning style is best for that child. That’s not always possible in a public school environment, where there might be as many as 30 students in a classroom and the teachers can only go as fast as the slowest child.
Because their numbers are fewer and the classes don’t have to meet rigid schedules, parents can, at a moment’s notice, opt to spend the day at the Greensboro Science Center studying birds. Good for them. But it might not be good for the rest of us as society loses with each child pulled out of public schools.
Public schools are under constant threat by legislative efforts to share funding through initiatives such as vouchers for private school students. Will the next step be to share tax dollars with home schools?
If parents choose to educate their children at home, the public shouldn’t pay for that right. Teachers already spend their own money on school supplies and have had to battle for decent pay. More should not be drained from public school budgets.
But there are higher stakes. Learning comes not just from books but from diverse interactions — the social and cultural exposure from each other that some children only get during the school day. What about the long-term impact of a community — and all of its parts — working together for the common good?
To be fair, this kind of interaction can and does happen among home-schoolers, if parents make the effort to provide it through sports, arts organizations and other activities.
Otherwise, gating ourselves off from each other — no matter how subtly — places some of life’s lessons at risk.
August 20, 2014 at 9:07 am
Frank Burns says:
The reason why middle class parents are opting out of the public schools is the complete lack of discipline in the classroom and lack of respect for teacher authority. Parents want to ensure that their child is in a good learning environment and not in a place where learning is disrupted by unruly students. Until public schools fixes that problem, the middle class will make other arrangements.
