A home-schooling free-for-all?

Unlike much education in this country, home-schooling is broadly unregulated, writes Motoko Rich in The New York Times. Along with its steady growth has come a debate and lobbying war over how much oversight such education requires. Eleven states do not require home-schooling families to register with district or state agencies, according to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Fourteen states do not specify subjects that families must teach, and only nine states require parents have at least a high school diploma to teach their children. In half of states, children taught at home never take a standardized test or are subject to formal outside assessment. The movement was once concentrated among religious families and parents who wanted to release their children from the strictures of traditional classrooms; it now attracts parents seeking escape from excessive testing and stringent new standards. According to the most recent federal statistics, 1.8 million children were home-schooled in the U.S. in 2011-12, up from 1.5 million in 2006-07. The highest concentration of home-schooling families are in the South and West, though precise figures are difficult to collect because many states, including Connecticut, Oklahoma, and Texas, do not require registration. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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