Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kids (all 8 of them) never leave the house. They have a 8ft. fence and 1 acre yard where I assume they get some outside time. No one visits. Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

At what point does this become not "homeschool", but "school, with different licensing requirements for the teachers"? It doesn't seem right to discuss this setup in the same breath as children schooled by their own parent.

California provides awesome homeschool support. A lot depends on where you live.

In California the student enrolls in a home school program through a local public school. You are assigned a homeschool liaison and can enroll in public school classes. The kids and parents get a weekly checkin and support. You have to pass public school tests. You get a budget from the public school to use for materials.

My grandsons are getting homeschooled through 6th grade. My daughter decided it was just too hard to duplicate a high school education at home so she is phasing them into public school in middle school.

She gave each child the choice of home school or public school. The Covid lockdown made that choice easy for the kids. They know that if they don't keep up, she will send them back to public school. That is quite the motivator.

Just like your neighbors she works with other parents to keep the kids socialized, take them on field trips, and to form a support system. She also signs the kids up for sports.

The downside (from her observation) is since some of the early homeschoolers were bible based, she had to really review the school material. A surprising number of text books use the bible as history or have questionable science. She also noticed that many parents homeschool their kids because they can't participate in regular school (for various reasons). Her kids homeschool as a choice.

The biggest upside is that time is more flexible and the liaison is flexible. The family took a trip to NYC and the liaison was asking the boys quite a few questions about what they saw and learned.

Montessori is succesful with healthy wealthy beloved children.

We’ve seen something similar here with co-op schools. Not done in the home, but the teaching is handled by parents of the students. They are very happy with their school.

OK but that's virtually the same thing as public school.

66 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37277997

I wouldn't call that home schooling. That's more like a co-op model. They probably used professionally drafted curricula too.

It's like people are reinventing all the same stuff schools do at scale. Can't we be more efficient as a society?

Not to mention the privilege that is draped over every detail of this setup.

Did you notice that the article highlights the rise of homeschooling co-ops? This is intentional on the part of the homeschooling movement. It improves both socialization and educational opportunities (e.g., shared lab equipment).

Rather than pearl clutching about individual anecdotes or doubling down on government control, I think states should provide direct funding to homeschool co-ops in addition to direct funding to families. That money and its positive effects on socialization and educational development will only work if governments keep their noses out of the details (i.e., parallels arguments for UBI).

My son is autistic and non-verbal. The local public school program that he would be in is overwhelmed. We hire a speech language pathologist to tutor him 3-4 hours a day in our home. That is only possible because of Arizona's support for homeschooling families. Homeschooling is a great outlet when standardization fails.

> a lifetime of stunted socialization skills and poor work habits.

The joke's on you, I wasn't home-schooled and I still got both of those.

I mean, this cuts both ways. One of the most consistent predictors of success in public school is parental involvement.

The only school I ever went to that was good for socialization was community college. Tbh, for learning too. I basically learned all of math, from arithmetic up, as an adult at community college, to compensate for learning nothing and getting pushed through all of the grade levels at public school.

I wish they had community colleges where I live now lol.

My siblings and I were homeschooled up to about middle school. My mother had three years of college but no degree and taught all four of us at once. For financial reasons we all ended up going to public school at around late elementary/middle school and we were miles ahead of everyone from an academic standpoint. There were definitely some social issues integrating which didn't take long but I think our parents could have done a better job exposing us to "normal" kids and not moving around so much. YMMV.

For real. It's telling that the kids don't jump in here to defend the practice, hardly ever (also homeschooled, education was great, socialization was absolutely problematic despite doing all the homeschool group things.)

You and I have matching stories, unfortunately. I've made a point of sending my sons to public school for this reason. Now, of course this also means that I shopped for a district that aligned with my expectations. But would never want a repeat of my own experience.

I think being accountable for your work to a person who isn't in your family is actually an important thing to learn. It also turns out, parents aren't really qualified to be teachers just because they believe that they are.

Good education vs bad/no education

You'll find this in public schools too.

I’m sorry for you bad experience, but statistically kids do better when homeschooled. It’s not like public school as some minimal level they’re assured to bring kids up to.

The majority of my schooling was at home as well, and while education was mostly ok (with some notable highs and lows) my parents found it difficult to make the scheduling work for socialization (in part due to my semi-rural hometown — any activities meant a considerable drive), and so that was largely absent.

I’ve done alright for myself and have even managed to rank among top achievers in my family, but it’s felt like I’ve been stuck playing catchup in various ways throughout my adult life. Now in my mid-30s, in some aspects I feel that I’m where I should’ve been in my mid-20s.

With that in mind I wouldn’t say I’m against homeschooling necessarily, but I think it’s crucial for parents to consider if they really have the time available to make it as complete as it needs to be. If there’s any doubt at all it might not be a great idea.

You write pretty well based on these few sentences. I have found that nothing improved my writing more than reading authors I liked and being aware of (in some cases adopting or imitating elements of) their writing styles. Did you read a lot on your own?

Sorry that happened to you, but thankfully you're in a small minority with that outcome.

People socialised for thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of years before schools were invented.

I went to school and got beat up, colour me sceptical about school as a mechanism for socialisation.

there are obviously lots of kids that had a very bad homeschooling, and also lots of kids that had very bad public schooling. many kids are bullied so badly at school that they commit suicide, and many more develop antisocial habits there. the question is whether those issues are better or worse with homeschooling, and a single anecdote doesn't help us with that.

I was home-schooled and thought it was amazing. I then studied education and worked as a public middle school teacher. I definitely will co-op or home-school my kids unless they want to go to school.

In middle school I was beaten to the point where my jaw was wired shut. Nothing happened to the kid that did it and I had to be in his class for 2 years. Anything can have a bad outcome.

so kind of like public school then?

Check for homeschooling groups in your area. Meet and talk to parents, you’ll find out all about it including resource centers for when your child needs to learn topics where you are weak.

We’ve been homeschooling for 7 years. Our child’s social experience has increased both quantitatively and qualitatively. From few/constantly bullied physically and sexually, to many/nice thoughtful friends who will jump in and defend her instead of filming her, should things go down. She’s also a leader, does service for her community, and (proud papa moment here) at her 4th debate competition (3 per year in this league) won 9th place speaker and 3rd place team. Her team swept the series of 4 rounds. The only way their team could do that…wait for it…lots of practice aka socialization.

The “socialization” boogeyman is one of the most overplayed red herrings about homeschooling IMO.

I think I have basically the same opinion. It's not so much that I believe homeschooling is amazing in-itself, but rather that the public education system has so clearly deteriorated that it seems borderline criminal to subject your kids to it.

The question for me, personally, is private school vs. homeschooling. If you can avoid many of the downsides of public education via choosing the right private school (and being able to afford it), I do wonder if that would be superior to most homeschooling setups.

I think anyone who has been seriously bullied would definitely agree - being bullied as a child can severely fuck up the rest of your life. Sure, many/most eventually move on, but like you, 30 years later I've got the therapy bills to show for it.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty feeling envious about my nieces' upbringing. They went to private school that ran from 1-8 grade, so they essentially skipped the middle school experience that was detrimental to so many. Honestly, I believe middle school as I experienced it (a whole bunch of elementary "feeder" schools that fed into one giant middle school for 7-8 grade) is the dumbest invention in the history of humanity. It sticks together kids, at wildly different stages of development, in an unfamiliar environment where everyone is trying to find their place in the social hierarchy - Lord of the Flies should have been set in middle school. Much better IMO to just have kids stay together 1-8th grade, and by then most folks are at least well into puberty by the time they get to high school. Not saying of course bullying doesn't happen in high school, but I think by then more kids are able to find their "tribe", so if they are bullied they have friends to fall back on (again, I'm of course painting with broad strokes).

> That's not the socialization that I want for my kids.

On the other hand, I'd definitely want my children to be familiar with it. Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group. In my estimation people are getting worse at identifying it and collectively we're getting worse at punishing it.

> I work remotely, my wife freelances.

Are you both working full-time? What's the arrangement? How do you fit the homeschooling in around your jobs?

My wife and I have talked about this a lot. We don't have kids yet, but we're very open to the idea of homeschooling when the time comes. I'm not sure how we'll do it though - we're in a better position than most (we make good money and both wfh) but there are only so many hours in the day. I'm interested to know how other people make it work.

I taught PE for homeschool kids when I was a young man, at a YMCA. It was a small program we ran during some seasons. I'd get 6-15 kids every week for about an hour, and since it was daytime, we could use any facilities we wanted, so we spent a lot of time on the rock wall, at the skate park, and in the pool.

The kids were great, and the parents were mostly great, too.

Anyway, maybe there's some similar local programs. If not, I bet you could run one yourself. I bet youtube would make it super easy, actually.

Even when I taught, sometimes the parents would organize something else for a week, like a local hike.

Care to name the region of your 'degrading system' with your anecdote?

I'm glad that I grew up in {shithole} (as Trump would put it) where I was able to threaten to (and follow up on in one case) beating the shit out of my bullies in school. It didn't magically stop the bullying, but it made it much less effective when I could lunge at him/fake him out and make him flinch back in fear of a repeat.

Is oxygen flammable? I’m pretty well-educated and that question gave me pause. I know oxygen is involved in the combustion process, so I think the answer is yes, oxygen is flammable. That feels like a trick question though.

Running away from the problem will only make it worse.

The evidence is weak, but currently leans towards "parents can and actually do a better job than the professionals." This includes parents with low incomes, and includes parents with low educational achievement.

You categorize this as contributing to segregation, but I say that it contributes to diversity. Public school is a hugely homogenizing force and the homogeneity it targets is not necessarily good. I think it is good for society to have a set of people who were raised in an environment with fundamentally different experiences and priorities.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator... https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding.

Public school spending in the US is up almost 50% in the last 30 years.[0]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

> But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at).

The key assumption here is that the expertise and years of studying translates to desirable outcomes. The large expansion of homeschooling suggesting by the article suggests a great rise in people who no longer believe that the expertise promoted by teaching schools is actually relevant to teach their children.

After all, mass public schooling is only about a century old and default human experience in many ways has always been closer to what we call homeschooling.

Funding is not the issue. Private schools pay their teachers less and have higher success rates.

Public schools are still teaching in a style suited for the Industrial Revolution. They also are a jobs program, so they can’t change to accommodate students if it hurts the employees.

We let our 3 kids choose between homeschool and private school. As a result they tended to bounce back and forth between the systems depending on their priorities. By the time they reached 4th grade I was mostly a coach when they chose homeschooling. I would let them know the things they needed to learn and help them find curriculum. And when they got stuck on something they would come to me for help, but in general they were responsible for themselves. Mostly they would only do schoolwork for 3 hours a day or so.

They had no problems reintegrating into regular school when they chose to do so. Our youngest stayed on the homeschool track the longest (from 7th grade because they got involved in competitive Call of Duty. So they ended up doing the homeschool->community college->GaTech track.

> But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim?

There are awesome resources to educate you kid on just about anything. The real distinguishing attribute on whether a parent can be a good educator is whether their children can spin them up emotionally. If a parent can't stay calm when their child is pushing their buttons homeschooling probably won't work. And then secondarily, a parent should know when they are over their head and need to bring in assistance. Not every parent is equipped to help their children learn calculus and other advanced courses.

How good were you at your profession when you got your bachelor's?

How good were your "average" classmates?

I can teach my (hypothetical) child better than the "average" teaching-degree graduate. You're selling yourself short if you don't think you can, too, with a focused effort.

My friend group is like 20ish elementary school teachers (US). They are all great people, but they are quite variable in competence. Some are very good, and some can't move beyond the basics in Kindergarten.

What I'm saying is, you're placing way too much faith in the teachers.

Last I heard, in Florida, they were accepting "spouses of active duty military" for teaching positions without further qualification because they're so hard up.

Homeschool done right (TM) isn’t you teaching by yourself though. Teach your kids to read well at an early age, get a good math curriculum, and feed them high quality books written by people who know way more about each subject than you do.

Self-learning and reflecting on what you read are two of the most important parts of learning. Too often, schools pay lip service to these ideas, then spoon feed information to students.

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding.

Not everyone agrees that is the problem.

Bullying and indoctrination are two examples that many people cite as reasons they choose to homeschool.

At least in my country the homeschooling is ballooning as parents don't want the LGBT stuff and DQST forced on their kids but also don't want to be accussed of being a bigot when they raise issue with it.

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding.

Lack of funding isn't always the problem. As jawns mentioned, there's a lot of reasons to remove your kids from public school.

> I have two kids, would consider myself very well educated (have a PhD, etc), and I habe absolutely 0 confidence in myself schooling my kids.

Interesting. I'm surprised you feel this way while acknowledging that most educated teachers "aren't really good at it". Perhaps you aren't qualified to teach your kids, and that's okay. At least you have the self-awareness to know they need help from someone else.

> public schooling is obviously an attempt at leveling the playing field between children from different backgrounds.

Yep. But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers.

> something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim?

You have to consider capacity. It is a parent educating 1-2 children vs a teacher educating 30+. So while the teacher has a lot more training on how, a lot of the how is how to do it in bulk.

Would an individual focused on solving any particular problem outperform a PhD trying to solve 30 at once? I don't think that is unreasonable. Someone who hasn't picked up a book on software development yet has a reasonable chance of beating me (professional software developer) if I work on 30 projects at once.

If you have the means, you can also buy a lot of teaching a la carte.

When faced with similar resource and time constraints, teacher is going to win. But the gap in those is huge.

>The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding

I'm late and this probably won't be read, but I disagree. There is no strong correlation between funding and public education "success".

The only thing that correlates is parents involvement in education. This isn't something you can realistically spend your way out of. (It's been tried).

If funding is truly the underlying problem, why does Utah have some of the best K-12 outcomes in the country while being dead last in per pupil spending?

This too is my experience.

I grew up in a place with a large number of religious organizations and outcome of this is what I would consider abuse in a huge number of cases. Would the children themselves think so at the time, kinda hard when you're taught "spare the rod, spoil the child" and "Of course the Earth is only 6000 years old" daily.

It's a fundamental change versus the Prussian model, which provided a basis for much of the educational theory in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

It's interesting that we treat kettling children up indoors by age cohort with little movement and making them solve math problems ad nauseum as if it were the most natural thing in the world and treat those who can't sit still and learn in such an environment (or understand the purpose of doing all of those math problems for 13 years) as if they are an aberration.

Surely, this can't be true. For most of human history, children may have learned to do whatever their parents did behaviorally or vocationally, whether that be to become a forager, farmer, peasant, nobility, whatever, but almost nobody ever received any kind of general-purpose, primarily academic education, and whatever they learned, they learned by following their parents around and doing it, not by structured, formal curricula.

I'm sure homeschooling can work out fine, but that is hardly assured by simply being inline with historical tradition. If you go to war with broadswords and spears, you're going to lose. If you insist on living without indoor plumbing or refrigerated food storage, you're likely going to have your kids taken away, and rightfully so, in spite of the fact humans lived that way by default longer than not.

There are many behaviours which were common throughout human history which would now be fringe movements. Human and/or animal sacrifices, for instance.

The majority (non-aristocratic, non-clergy) were illiterate for most of human history.

Default state for most human history was that only small minority of people can read and write. It also meant that majority of people have no say in public affairs.

But should you be able to totally escape from scrutiny? To me it seems very wrong to deny a child the opportunity to learn the things they'd need to function in society like reading, math, and science. Most homeschooling parents are teaching these things to there kids, but there are some who aren't. That ought to be stopped.

The college I most recently consulted with had to take a homeschool "transcript" that can literally be a signed paper from the parent handwritten with nothing to back it up.

It's astounding. I don't know if that's just because that particular state doesn't have very strict rules around homeschooling, or if that's standard; I just haven't done the research.

The statement implies the students being taught in schools today are learning at a level they should be. With all the exceptions made and dumbing down of curriculum, most classes teach to the least abled in the class holding back many.

That said, I don't think home schooling is an option for all either. Covid showed how difficult it could be for many families.

It is, and article hit pieces like this are exactly why it will continue to expand. Newsflash, there’s an actual large portion of the population that more and more doesn’t want what is taught to their children regulated by the government.

And part of the point of schools, at least in the modern era, is that kids have access to authority figures if they are being abused at home. That access often ends with home schooling.

For some, that may be true. For others, it's a replacement for private school that they can't afford.

> Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?

It sounds ideal.

But we might want at least some oversight and regulation to, for example, make sure kids aren't being homeschooled on how to build rockets and kill some group of people.

Sounds like a generational Dunning-Kruger situation.

While there may be an effort to defund public schools, funding (inflation adjusted) has been increasing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

I find it a bit far fetched to suggest that these private religious schools have enough influence to change laws and get tax dollars

The much simpler explanation is that having influence over private schools is very tempting for the govt and the easiest tool is via giving or retaining funding which they don't personally have to pay. They just want to secure votes and influence

I think that’s a mischaracterization. What the movement is about is that everyone is in agreement that education is a right and that the government is responsible for funding it. But that the government is not responsible (or even competent at) providing it. Governments are good at taxing and distributing but not at meeting the needs of individuals.

So the solution is to privatize education so parents can choose a schools that fits their child’s unique needs and suits their values. We are a massive diverse country and it’s crazy to think we have so many shared, universal values.

So, let a marketplace take the place of government schools and give everyone an equal amount of money to choose the school that they see as best fit. The model works for pre-schools and colleges really well and there’s no reason to think it won’t for the rest.

> But homeschooling is a pretty major reaction to that, and it shouldn't be done without serious consideration for the non-zero chance that your kids will resent you for that decision.

As a parent of two daughters who are homeschooled - unschooled, actually - I 100% agree.

As with everything, our approach is intentional and we're open with our kids about it. If they wanted to go to a school - public, private, or religious - we would make that happen.

Our eldest is currently taking three hours per day at the local public high school. She's 15, wants to own a equine stud farm, and is taking every agriculture class she can find. After this year she will have exhausted their offerings in that subject, so she'll likely start at the local community college in the fall.

It’s HN, we have to keep in mind there is a huge self-selection bias that’s happening. In general, I consider good public schools can be good, bad ones can be bad. But even in the worst case you somewhat interact with other people at the least.

Same goes to the homeschooling — some can be successful, some can be disastrous. The majority of homeschooled kids that would fail, definitely wouldn’t be on these forums. So we’ll hear mostly success stories that came out of it.

It’s hard to apply the comments to a generalized idea from HN.

Yeah, I have definitely run into other formerly homeschooled students who really enjoyed it. Usually they had some choice in being homeschooled (either requested it or were given a yearly option to opt out). I myself would say I had a mixed experience. I did well academically because my parents prioritized academics and had college as a strong goal for me, but the religious indoctrination and utter lack of social experiences was awful for me. It also seriously strained my relationship with my mom, who did not manage her chronic illness, extended family issues, and homeschooling me well. Another family I knew had a 16 year old who could barely do 5th grade level math, a girl my age who couldn't read, and two more kids who were also going to be 'unschooled' by their IMO neglectful mother.

HSLDA has successfully lobbied against even tracking if a child is homeschooled, so there is no way to truly statistically tell which experience is the representative one. All you get are anecdotes, mostly from the parent's point of view.

A school-like environment that doesn't indoctrinate their children in values that the parents disagree with, which is what would happen if their children went to public schools.

> I mean reading this it just sounds like they are discovering the hard way the concept of... a school??

Yeah, a school that works.

Ya, this doesn't end well. The data isn't amazing for homeschooling, but what I've seen shows a strong bimodal distribution. Extremely wealthy home schoolers with tons of resources have kids that perform well in college and have strong lifetime earnings. Everyone else not so much, unprepared for college, earnings well below their peers. Pair this with the fairly predatory organizations offering "learning materials" and education online. Could probably make a few million launching an overnight online school run by a bible trained LLM.

Home schooling doesn’t mean setting up the garage with a chalkboard and two kids at their desks with mom or dad playing teacher. Home schooling doesn’t even have to take place at home! Lots of homeschooling parents will take their kids to the library, the (science, art, natural history) museum, to offices and factories, and out into nature preserves.

It also doesn’t mean just Billy and his little sister Jenny learning all by themselves. Homeschooling parents often join groups where they can bring all the kids together. The kids can socialize and the parents can share responsibility for teaching and supervising.

It also doesn’t mean just the parents participate. At my local public library, the children’s floor has a huge amount of programming aimed at homeschooling families. The librarians run activities with the kids, showing them how to find books in the library for science research, make crafts together (by hand and with library 3D printers), learn about engineering by building cars and robots with electronics components.

Homeschooling can of course be done badly and we should worry about kids in those environments. However, homeschooling done right can be far more dynamic and engaging than the best public schools around. It also doesn’t have to be expensive, it just takes time and commitment from the parents involved.

In Alberta, homeschool is really more akin to "remote school" than homeschool.

The kids are still required to pass the same exams to get their high school diploma, and they still get a package of course work and required reading and such. They also have access to a teacher to ask questions to, who can help explain concepts, projects, and such.

My wife was homeschooled here growing up and she loved it. She would finish her school for the day in the morning then do whatever she wanted for the rest of her time. She would also finish her courses early and have long summers. Now she has a masters degree and leads teams at work.

Definitely not for every family or every kid, but the outcomes don't have to be terrible

I think possibly the worst place to learn and practice social skills is from other kids who are just as in the dark as you are.

In my experience a home schooled child is significantly more likely to be good at social skills than a public schooled child. They are also adept at navigating adult conversation and social situations much sooner.

Just FYI, while I share the overall sentiment, I think you are not up to date on the socialization aspect of homeschooling. Typical homeschooling today includes activities where most homeschooled kids from the town gather together for PE or art or other enrichment activities, maybe even specialized academic activities.

When you have kids your perspective on many, many things changes in very big ways. This is more true when the pregnancy is planned for and you and your spouse are both ready to have children.

We don't personally home school but have many friends that do. It's a very common thing in our church and community. It's hard to tell what kids are homeschooled versus the ones that aren't. Many homeschools engage in co-op programs and use curricula to drive personal engagement. For instance in one family we're very good friends with they use a curriculum that requires community service for middle school ages and up. There are several charities that they engage with in addition to the community service activities that the church is doing.

> as neutral as possible on political or culture war issues

I don't think it's really possible to be neutral about culture war issues, sort of by definition, especially when many of the wars are about schools themselves. A school is part of American culture, it can't somehow choose not to participate. To use a historical example, there was a culture war over teaching evolution in schools. A teacher at the time could describe the history and facts of the controversy without stating their opinion on it, but when the students leave that classroom, they are still in a school that either teaches evolution or doesn't. By existing and having a curriculum, the school takes a position in the culture war.

Imagine if your country held a referendum on a certain issue, and said "if more than 50% of citizens vote yes, the law passes, otherwise it fails". You could have a genuinely neutral opinion on the issue ("I don't care which side wins"), but you cannot take a neutral action, because not voting makes the law less likely to pass. This is unfair, and you can be mad about it, but the only way to be "neutral" would be to leave the country and renounce your citizenship so that you are no longer part of the equation. Similarly, in a culture war, the only way to be neutral would be to not participate in the culture in question, which is even more difficult than leaving a country.

Let me give one more example: whether or not to tip your server in a restaurant. Tipping 10% instead of 20% is not neutral. Tipping 50% of the time you go to a restaurant is not neutral. You could say "I don't wish to take a position, so I will no longer go to restaurants", but I'm confident the anti-tipping side would claim you as one of their own. Again it feels unfair, but it's just how culture works.

> For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair.

I homeschooled my daughter for reasons other than culture wars or politics (she’s a violinist and public schools didn’t regard practice time as particularly important.)

But I never thought of public school funding as transactional. We did not take direct advantage of the benefit; but a reasonably well educated populace benefits me in a host of other ways. So I harboured no resentment when paying my public school levy.

> If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of.

That's not money you have a right to as a parent. I don't take part in all the social programs my government offers, but I don't get all that money back.

I believe that some states have programs that give you the money if you home-school. There seem to be some restrictions, though:

https://idealschool.education/full-day-program/utah-voucher-...

> If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of.

Money spent ≠ value provided. My kid's class has over half a million dollars spent on it per year. But many parents see it as merely childcare, and then spend more money on after school tutoring and activities.

I can see the appeal of skipping the schooling and doing the other activities during the school day. It's probably much easier/cheaper to get appointments before 2, when most kids are in school. And there's more flexibility in terms of scheduling. I just heard today that a family was threatened with being kicked out of our local school if they accrued 10 days of unexcused absences (which includes vacation days). While I don't think the school would actually kick the family out, the fact that this is even floated as an idea sounds crazy.

You've just made a strong case for a voucher type of program.

It's biased in the same way an unchoked shotgun shoots pellets with wider dispersion. K-12 education done independently, atomized from regional or national institutions, means people come out more different, so the edges of the cluster are further away. Homeschoolers are biased about 43% to white and rural, so it's pretty fair that the fring is going to be on that side of things. I'm kind of stumped as to how that's biased.

"Somalia—a country that once conjured images of famine and interminable civil unrest—"

Is that snippet most likely an expression of bias, or is it most likely setting up to challenge bias?

What about that is untrue?

I love home schoolers, but there are options.

4th through 7th: seek out a FIRST Lego League program for your kids. FLL teaches then to think and solve problems.

High School: Dual credit does exist. Look for a high school in your area that offers a college degree through dual credit.

That’s a pretty wide range of outcomes but is it materially different than what happens to kids in average public schools? There are also factors like social class and resources that make judging outcomes pretty tough. Most people that homeschool kids due to religion aren’t going to be well off.

If you have the ability and desire to homeschool then it's always going to be the best choice. Only if you feel like you won't be a good teacher or you do not have the resources should you consider public/private school. My kids are in public school because neither my wife nor I have the time to homeschool. However, I feel like we still do about 25% homeschool because of the engagement required to actually educate our kids. They basically goto school to sit in a chair until the workday is almost over.

/both our kids are in one of the "best" public middle schools in DFW supposedly. It's still filled with the most wildly incompetent staff imaginable.

No, it's more: "if you homeschool, you, and we are free to not even have to worry about this as an issue, versus us trying with varying degrees of success to lock it out of your kids school".

The two can be entirely compatible.

Controlling the mind? Are you completely mental? American public education system came out of the labor rights movement and the need to combat juvenile delinquency. It has its faults at the moment but only because it is continuously being dismantled for privatization.

> Let's say I started making computers (somehow). I sell 10 the first year, 10 the next year, but I make to the front page of HN one day and I sell 1000 computers that year.

Homeschooling has been around a long time. A sudden and radical departure from that growth rate is notable. However, it does appear to have been more of a covid spike that has only partially subsided.

Yes or many people here went to good or elite public schools and assume their school is what the average high school experience is like.

Great point.

We need a "so-and-so's law" type name for this, even though it's obvious when you think about it.

I think the public school system is failing in so many ways and homeschooling is a better solution, but even with that, school shootings are near the absolute bottom of my concerns. They're an issue, but we have so many more pressing issues that are hurting kids so much more. The shootings are so heavily promoted on the news because engagement is good, clicks make money. Keeping people scared is profitable.

Most of those recorded "school shootings" are simply cases where a gun was fired on school grounds, not a "mass shooting". In literally almost every single case, it's one kid shooting another kid an is gang-related. You can actually go through and see the exact circumstances around each incident, along with a pertaining news article:

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year...

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of comfort! As long as your kids aren't violent teen gang members in the school parking lot after a football game, it's highly unlikely that they'll even know someone who has witnessed gun violence at any school.

I find it rather unlikely homeschool process had anything to do with, esp. Rust. At that age I did mostly assembly but that was just personal search/no teaching. Overall the kid is just an anecdote.

You talk about a moral education, but performatively your plan is "an individual solution to a social problem".

Irony aside, in other words, when homeschooling is the (rational) response of a parent doing their best by their children, then Margaret Thatcher has won: There is no society.

The graphics don't help clear things up, either. Showing the growth rate over time is interesting, but only if you also show the percent of kids in each camp. It's not immediately obvious whether homeschooled kids are 2%, 8%, or .2%, from looking at the charts (and even doing a ctrl-F on "percent").

It's kind of embarrassing that this article doesn't once mention the rough percentage of students that are being homeschooled.

> parental involvement is the single biggest determinant of children's success and growth

yes!

> my problem with homeschooling is that it's completely unregulated

oh dear. so...if perhaps you meant "not regulated to x standards" i could agree more readily with that, at least in US / many European. but even conceding that, regulation historically has tended to effectively supplant parental involvement with state involvement (speaking about actual effects of regulation, not intentions). contra your first point about parental involvement.

i suppose it's possible future regulation could be different. but i see no reason given the current cultural climate to think future regulations will in fact uphold parental responsibility over state responsibility.

and besides it appears to me that government funded schooling is being held up as the "huge daycare." it has automatic funding in most places - even those who would not wish to pay, even those who never have children involved in it are contributing. it is in fact consistently used as a way to collect more taxes, but i digress. if i were a lax parent i would not have any inclination to move away from something that is already paid for and easy for me. or if i simply needed a place for my children to go for 8 hours out of the day government funded schooling is an obvious easy option.

in short regulation is not the solution to bad parenting, nor is it a good way to prevent bad parenting.

> The data really makes it look like homeschooling increased a significant but not mind-blowing amount at the beginning of the pandemic, when parents pulled their kids out of school either because they thought they were unsafe or were upset about mask mandates.

I think you're forgetting the biggest reason: it turns out zoom school was a disaster and the worst of both worlds.

Considering education majors are as a group among the academically poorest performing majors, I think your concerns are unfounded. Consider also the educational fads like three-cueing that actively harmed children.

A few decades ago, most teachers did not have anything beyond high school education. While there are many valid defenses of public schooling, "public school teachers are more qualified" is not one of them, particularly given the miserable performance of many public schools - qualified teachers in 23 Baltimore schools failed to generate a single mathematically proficient student, and Baltimore is not alone. Credentials on their own don't mean anything if there's nothing worthwhile backing them. If anything, they are currently being used for gatekeeping purposes. For example, I have a Master's degree in CS and I was a TA, but if I were inclined to teach a CS at high schools, I have to spend a few thousand dollars and get a pointless certification.

> kids will only ever be as smart as their teachers

Clearly not true. Do you think every genius had teachers who ever also geniuses?

You do not need to be a qualified teacher to teach, and you do not need to teach in order to educate. Teachers need teaching skills to teach classes. That is very difficult but not something home educators need to do.

As for subject matter, parents can arrange access to appropriate resources. It is not usual for parents to teach everything and I think that is a bad approach to home education (the term I prefer, for just this reason).

My two home educated kids have been taught some subjects I know, they have gone to classes a bit, had tutors, done online courses, and done a LOT of self-teaching. I like the last of these because it developing study skills.

They have done well academically. My older daughter got a 9 in Latin GCSE, for example, for which she was entirely self-taught. For those unfamiliar with the UK system that is a top grade in public exams typically done at 16 (although my kids did most of theirs younger - less stressful, less at risk from adverse events, and one of the advantages of HE).

Even for subjects I helped them with, once they reached their teens the help needed was very minimal.

A study in Australia found HE was unusual in that working class kids did better than middle class kids. A study in the US found HE kids whose mothers had not graduated high school did better academically than similar kids who went to school. A study in the UK found HE kids did better after adjusting for factors such as parental education and income.

What I do think is a bad idea (and I suspect it what your friends are doing) is to attempt to replicate school syllabuses and teaching methods at home.

>> the kids will only ever be as smart as their teachers and these 'teachers' (ie parents) are not the brightest.

I can feel your arrogance and contempt from here, suffice to say that’s not how “smart” works and it’s certainly not how education works. Sounds like you could benefit from some extra home schooling yourself.

For some reason there's not a lot of academic interest in homeschool outcomes, so there's not much data out there. But the data that is out there shows why parents who turn to homeschooling almost never turn back.

And I've never met a homeschooled kid who didn't seem weird. And by weird, I mean able to easily discuss complex topics with adults, showing not only competent conversation skills, but broad knowledge of the world and how it works.

https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

Naïve per-student-spending calculations can misleading. Some students cost a lot more than others. My state spends hundreds of thousands per student in some cases—but that's schools in juvenile detention facilities. Nonetheless, that goes in the stats. Kids in self-contained classrooms ("special ed" kids who can't function in the normal classroom) can be several times as expensive to educate as the median kid. Kids in ordinary classrooms who get a dedicated assistant, they've got all the usual spending plus the fully-loaded cost of the assistant, so that's easily over $50k total. Kid in a gifted program? Add low-five figures to the cost. Fancy selective-admission public schools, which some states have? Typically higher spending per student than other schools, which drags up the average.

They also have bussing costs, which (e.g.) private schools don't, which further complicates comparisons. That's not a small amount of money.

That is one consideration. I'm surprised more gun owners don't consider how much more likely their choice is to lead to accident or suicidal death in their own home.

If we outlawed private gun ownership in the country then both school and home could be much safer.

Not sure how old your toddler is or whether you already know about this, but you might consider adding 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons' to your cart: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Well the issue is that the United States is very diverse. Most countries are basically monocultural ethnostates. My kids do not belong to American society but they definitely belong to a particular culture. And within that culture, and families who partake, we do 'share' our children.

But, to bring the culture wars into this, how do you feel that you have joint guardianship of a child whose parent fundamentally disagrees with you? With our church group, I trust the parents to discipline, to entertain and to teach in a way consistent with my beliefs, even if they're very different people. On the other hand, my next door neighbor is convinced my daughter is a boy because she likes trucks and would like her to be trans, like she has already transed her son. When you perceive other adults attempting to abuse your child and this is a common enough movement you're not going to be able to feel any joint sense of guardianship. And it's not just culture issues. Unsurprisingly, neighbors children are also poorly behaved, disrespectful, and never get told no.

America has fully embraced multiculturalism without assimilation, so there are now dozens of cultures, so no sense of joint guardianship over children.

So grown ups in a country where children aren't allowed to be home schooled generally believe that their children "belong to society"?

At what point do we call it culture and "difference of opinion" as opposed to just plain old indoctrination or brainwashing?

It's not a left vs right issue, this is freedom vs tyranny. Right now the left isn't able see it as Tyranny or indoctrination because their predominant opinions and values are being taught to children, so it's convenient. It's another form of "civilizing those barbarian <insert unfavorable group here>".

At the end of the day, I don't belong to society, and neither do my children. They belong to themselves and can choose for themselves how they see fit. Until then, I'll instill my values to them, and make sure they treat their fellow beings better than the way "society" treats them.

There is a huge spectrum, but back when we homeschooled (my wife wasn't yet comfortable sending the kids back to the classroom in 2021) we did a few events where local homeschool kids got together for various activities. Tree identification/nature trail at the park, visits to historic sites, stuff like that.

Of the parents I met there was some variety, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed like they were mostly doing it because they thought the public schools were too secular and were teaching "sinful" sciences like evolution. They were all polite about it, but it started making me wonder if all of these other aspects of homeschooling were just a fig leaf over a whole lot of religious indoctrination. Maybe those kids are fine, I didn't quiz them, but it did raise an eyebrow.

Thank you. I came here to say this. We're homeschooling, and I made the mistake of reading the train wreck of comments on the Post article. It was irritating how many people were absolutely certain of what homeschooling is and what its shortcomings (or successes) are, when it's nowhere close to being one thing. Homeschooling is defined by what it is not.

Homeschooling because of COVID policies in public schools? Ok, there are some of those, some because things were too strict, some because things were too lenient. For religious reasons? Yes, some people want more of their religion, some want less of others'. Are the parents teaching? Sometimes, sometimes it's a co-op, sometimes it's online, sometimes it's at a community college. (Usually it's a mixture.) Then there are "non-location based charter schools" where the parents receive some of the state per-student funding, ...

It's really hard to find a common thread between all of these scenarios, because there isn't one. Other than not being in a public school. Er... at least, not being in a public school for most of the day, since some people do use bits and pieces from public schools.

"Not-zebras are awful because they're eating my rose bushes!"

100% agree with this.

Also, with the right community, it is possible to have plenty of "socialization" with other kids. My family participates in a parent-led co-op that allows kids to benefit from different strengths in different parents and to have lots of friends.

As my kids are neurodivergent, I think this environment has been safer for them and allows them to focus on their passions. There is still some peer pressure re: neurodivergence, but I think it was less severe than when I was in public school with less obvious neurodivergence.

We started homeschooling by happenstance when it turned out that kindergarten was going to conflict with our son's beloved jiu-jitsu class. The class was a bit of a drive and we weren't going to be able to get there in time for his favorite part: the 30 minutes of horsing around on the mats before class started.

We thought, "Well, it's only kindergarten". It worked out well enough (knock on wood) that we just kept going.

Compared to my own harried "THE BUS IS COMING!!!" sleep-deprived school days, it has been a wonderful change.

If I could go back in time, I'd put my mom in an ankle lock until she agreed to do the same for me.

Especially since I learned that in my home state homeschoolers can participate in high-school sports. In high school I had to wake up at 4AM for 5AM hockey practice. If I could have returned home afterwards and slept, rather than going straight to school, I would have thanked the Gods.

> Treating all these scenarios as a single thing that you can hold a single, consistent opinion about suggests to me a lack of familiarity with its wide spectrums along multiple dimensions. It's like passing a judgment on a person based on their race, country of origin, gender, etc.

A huge +1 to this, from observing the many friends I have who do homeschooling. Judging by their results -- super-smart, super-well-behaved children -- has gotten me thinking I'd like to do the same once I have kids.

Sure, but ultimately when kids receive vastly different childhood educations, it will eventually fracture society because we're all starting from a completely different set of beliefs. Even if some schools are "better" or "worse" for the most part they have similar curriculum. As time goes on and that curriculum diverges, it'll make the political fractures in society today seem like a walk in the park IMO.

The social aspect of schooling is just as important as the educational part of it. There's a reason growing up when we had home schooled kids that joined for their high school years, they were the "weird kids" - they just had absolutely no idea how to interact socially with their peers. And for some folks that carries on to adulthood.

Disclaimer: my parents were public school teachers, and seeing the system deteriorate feels like a travesty. The number of parents who think school is daycare is disheartening to say the least.

Not only do different parents have different skills, but also different kids have different needs. And different schools have different strengths and weaknesses.

The big thing is this: Parents, the buck stops with you. When one of your kids tells you "Every day when I get ready for school, my stomach hurts", pay attention to that. Homeschooling won't be perfect, no more than public or private or charter schools will be. But pay attention enough to see when something isn't working, and figure out what you have to do to make it better.

This can cut both ways. If you're homeschooling and your kids aren't actually learning things, pay attention to that, too.

I have never been homeschooled or homeschooled my children, but as someone who personally knows a looooot of homeschoolers, this has got to be the most accurate assessment of homeschooling I've seen.

The various people I know who homeschool do it for different reasons; like you mentioned, some are entrepreneurs who need to stay mobile as a family, some have lost hope in the educational system and its ability to educate, and one particular friend who is in Mexico has his children in a co-op that consists of a large group of like-minded friends where they divide the curriculum based on area of expertise (e.g., the mechanical engineer teaches math, the fitness couple teaches physical education, the history buff teaches history, etc.).

I don't have the network for a co-op, but hands down, that would be my school of choice for my kids.

> but it's actually a whole bunch of very dissimilar things.

Even in the same kid it can be very dissimilar.

The main reason I was homeschooled was that the local school system's ridiculous "whole word" approach to reading and writing was failing me badly, and by age ten I still could barely read. So that part of my homeschooling experience was very traditional, hands on, drilling in phonics and other time tested techniques... and soon I finally could read and write fluently.

Meanwhile for math and science, I had no problem figuring it on my own with much less input now that I could finally read. I wasn't quite unschooled for those subjects. But it was close to that.

Funny thing is I actually learned basic programming _before_ I could read fluently. I remember the hardest thing about it being struggling to read the books I was learning from. Programming itself seemed pretty straightforward in comparison.

Right, a family member of mine was recently home schooled after their freshman year of high school. For a long list of reasons which can be summarized as the local public school was absolute garbage small town meth capital level of schooling. (Think no AP/etc classes) and a local district unwilling to provide an alternative school.

Home schooling in this case was basically 70 something credits from the local community college, a handful of CLEP exams, and a bunch of highschool credits from the state online highschool system. The result was a diploma from said local highschool and an AA from the community college and acceptance to a college in the top 50 nationally.

So, its not all dumb parents doing dumb things, but sometimes parents making the best out of a poor set of circumstances.

And AFAIK the diploma from the crappy HS was just a rubber stamp to check the "graduated from HS" for the community college to grant the AA, and the public Uni to take them as a junior (at age 18 no less).

edit: And I should point out the local HS itself apparently had some decent teachers/etc, its just the administration was catering to a conservative community largely disinterested in public education made worse by the fact that the top 10% or so of economically advantaged students had already left the district for a fancy private school or some kind of early college classes similar to my family member. Its the white version of the inner city failing school story, except there wasn't a better highschool on the other side of town for the motivated kids/parents to transfer to unless you also had 15k/year to spend.

> Beyond that, there are parents who are well equipped to homeschool and parents who are not. And there is a small but hard-to-ignore percentage who claim to homeschool but really neglect their kids.

There's such a disparity between states. States like mine require homeschooled kids to occasionally attend actual school for check in or certain classes, and participate in the same testing (regardless of your opinion of such testing).

Other states are more vague and less frequent about such thing.

And then a notable swathe of states, you might as well go off the grid. Tell the state you're homeschooling, and then that's it, you never interact with the state again. Troubling. And there's not just neglect, but active abuse, that that can help hide.

Texas is working on an amendment that ostensibly cuts taxes on child care facilities to make them more affordable. It's very easy to tell that those savings won't be passed on to consumers. In reality, it's very much more a pro-homeschooling thing. "Homeschool your kids and save on your property taxes".

Fully agree. For a long time I was heavily biased against it because of the versions of it I saw, growing up in a conservative religious family and seeing other far more conservative religious families in our church/etc do a very extreme/strict/sheltering form of it- and then becoming non-religious, kept that bias.

But over time I've come to realize that is only one very specific form of 'homeschooling' that is nothing like other forms

Religion and its associated anti-science (etc) is the majority reason for home schooling. The groups in highly-skilled co-ops are a small minority and are not what the word normally invokes.

>Thirteen Baltimore City high schools don't have a single student who has achieved grade-level proficiency in math. A recent news headline.

The system is failing those students in such complete ways that I can't see any way in which homeschooling could be worse than that. Those kids could probably learn better math by sleeping with a textbook under their pillow and relying on osmosis.

A kid could probably get better education just by being bored and left in a room with books and select access to educational YouTube videos than what parts of the educational system offer.

Btw there was a epic tweek lately along the lines of: I pay my son 10$ for every book he reads. It's my best deal ever and he thinks he is ripping me off.

I was (non-religiously) home schooled and very much benefited from it. I was able to spend a lot more time reading books than I would have in school. I was able to learn about computers, programming, etc. I did get some socialization through other kids in my neighborhood and events with other home school families. I started in back in school around high school and, although it was a bit of a transition, I enjoyed it (and don't regret homeschooling either).

It probably wouldn't work well for every kid and every family. Personally, I found the structure of elementary school very constraining and was glad to get out. I'm sure there are pros and cons to both approaches.

I think relative to my peers I'm generally able to be a bit more self motivated. And I think schools generally teach you to solve problems using only the information on the page in front of you, whereas the real world is much messier than that.

> Treating all these scenarios as a single thing that you can hold a single, consistent opinion about suggests to me a lack of familiarity with its wide spectrums along multiple dimensions.

I'll give it a shot: in all these scenarios, there ought to be a minimum standard-- backed up by the state-- to ensure none of these children are being abused or neglected. Public and private schools benefit from the children having to be around many other people every day, some of whom are teachers and administrators who have a profession obligation to report such things.

AFAICT there is no common standard to enforce this across the myriad concepts of home school you mention. There obviously should be. Importantly, none of the "very dissimilar" concepts of home schooling you mention obviate this need.

^^^^^^^^^^ This.

We unschooled our kids. Worked beautifully. They're both as much of a success or failure as if they had gone to public school. Had more to do with their idiot gene donor's DNA than their schooling.

How do you deal with the cases where kids are neglected or indoctrinated against American society?

But one thing is clear, it is the $-The average taxpayer paid $1,087 to Pentagon contractors $300 for education https://www.nationalpriorities.org/whats-new/2023/4/17/pay-t...

I am of the firm opinion that there is no substitute for a formal education.

Homeschooling is great if one or both parents are teachers or come from a teaching background. Homeschooling is a disaster if neither parent has much of a formal education, or lack teaching acumen, but still feel that they are qualified to teach their kids. Between those two extremes is a huge range of variability.

Exams are going to become even more of a factor to ensure kids coming from a range of diverse backgrounds meet the minimum bar for university.

At the end of the day, facts are facts. Not knowing them is detrimental to self, and if in a position of authority, to others as well. People can pretend all education is equivalent, until they need to see a doctor for a disease, or an engineer to build a house or a lawyer to fight their case. Then they want the best, the most qualified. Four years of engineering/medical/law cannot fix 12 years of poor educational foundations.

Edit: Downvotes are welcome, but it won't change what is factual. Homeschooling is guaranteed to increase inequality, not decrease it.

One reason i prefer the term home education (it gets away from the idea it is like school - methods are very different).

The term used historically in the UK (essentially when posh people did it with tutors, look up older biographies of the Queen!) was "private education".

The way I think of it is that it is every form of education other than school.

https://pietersz.co.uk/2021/01/there-is-no-home-education

My experience of it has been good. My kids definitely prefer it to the experiences of their school going friends. I think the individualised opportunities of home education has a lot to do with my older daughter going into a male dominated field - she is doing a degree apprenticeship (work while at university, takes a bit longer, get work experience and salary, and fees paid) in Electrical Engineering at the University of Warwick and Jaguar Landrover.

My only regret is not starting home education earlier.

Yes, there are a lot of reasons to homeschool. And I don’t want to undermine your idea, but the vast majority (by far) of people that homeschool do so because of disagreements with secular education. Public schools are an increasingly politicized issue, likely the dominant factor in the recent uptick of homeschooling, and I think saying it is not possible to hold an opinion on the issue one way or the other is a bit too reductionist of reality.

Then these should be distinguished and regulated appropriately.

Point of homeschooling is precisely that it's individualized instruction meant to, hopefully, match your kid's needs.

It is a single concept. Different people have different reasons to do it, and different aptitudes at managing it.

Regardless of the form of homeschooling, It is quite clear that we are moving towards a new form of "Dark Ages", where people just try to protect themselves behind walls. The State is failing massively in security, education, infra-structure.

That's missing the main reason for the massive increase in home schooling over the past 3 years: parents wanting to escape mandatory COVID measures in schools like masking.

And there are people who homeschool, or more often don't school, because they are cults.

Homeschooling _can_ work. But the likelihood of it working well is pretty low. You literally have a teacher wife who is homeschooling the kids. For most people homeschooling = not schooling.

Very heavily used by the hassidic community here in nyc to prevent girls from having any education.

I linked to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI as a top level post, but just to give you some ideas. This is John Oliver's take on it.

In short, homeschooling is idiocracy in making

There is a single opinion that is valid of all those different forms together: it (home schooling) will increase inequality in society in terms of amplitude, spread and flavors.

Ah yes, John Oliver.

Probably one of the most biased formats you can find. Mixing comedy with pseudo-facts and personal opinions to push an agenda/narrative.

I wish we could only see what he produces as comedy but way too often people love to share his clips/narrative as a semi-reliable source of information.

It is almost exclusively a middle class activity. Also not that expensive if one parent is home. I knew many homeschooled kids who were just given a math textbook and worked through it. You only go to math class in public school for about 182 hours a year, so a diligent kid can do a year of math in a few months no problem.

How familiar are you with the experiences and outcomes of poor kids in public schools?

The rich hire tutors or send their kids to $25k-$75k/yr private school. Or both.

Rich families already do this by sending their kids to private schools. Have you seen how expensive and competitive these schools are, even starting as early as Kindergarten?

From personal experience, the average homeschooled family seems to be blue collar

Yes it is. People forget this because they live in a bubble. It’s like remote work, nice for the laptop class, but not possible for the person growing your food and manufacturing your tesla.

Home schooling can be anything from the very best to the very worst, depending on who's doing the teaching and how well they're doing it.