Harris Poll: One-third of U.S. Adults Know Someone Who Homeschools Their Child

One-third of U.S. Adults Know Someone Who Homeschools Their Child

  Two-thirds of adults cite dissatisfaction with academic instruction as a
main reason why they think parents in general or they themselves homeschool
                              their children

   ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The passage of the No Child
Left Behind Act has focused attention not only on public education in the
United States, but on alternatives to public education as well. One such
alternative is homeschooling, a growing trend in recent years(1). One-third
(34%) of U.S. adults know someone who currently homeschools their child.
Among those households with children who are old enough to have attended
school, eight percent report that their child has been homeschooled at some
point in their education.
   These are the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 2,435 U.S. adults
surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between March 8 and 14, 2006.
   Reasons for homeschooling

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Homeschoolers A Small But Growing Minority- Harvard "Homeschool Anonymous" takes flight

by Rachel Pollack
The Harvard Crimson online edition

Crystal E. Winston ’06-’07 never had a prom. She never rode a school bus, went to gym class, or received a report card. Like a growing number of students around the country, Winston, went to school by staying at home—from kindergarten through senior year.

Winston, a history of art and architecture concentrator in Mather House, says her mother taught her at home because the St. Louis school district where she grew up was “way terrible.”

“There weren’t many options for us,” Winston says. “My mom wanted us to have a certain set of values growing up, and she wanted to make sure that we got those if we were homeschooled.”

The Department of Education reported in 2003 that 2.2 percent of the American school-age population was homeschooled. And experts at the Graduate School of Education say that a majority of those families choose to homeschool their children for religious reasons.

But even as the homeschooling trend takes root nationwide, a disproportionately tiny number of these students ever win entry to Harvard.

‘A GROWTH INDUSTRY’

In 1989, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that around five to 10 homeschooled students applied to Harvard yearly.

Following the rise in the number of homeschoolers nationwide, between 100 and 200 homeschooled students applied to Harvard this year, says Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73. Lewis adds that many other applicants were homeschooled for part of their education.

“It’s a growth industry. We’ve probably had an increase in numbers over the past 10 years,” she says.

Lewis says she cannot give exact figures because the admissions office does not place homeschooled students’ applications into separate categories.

Despite this increase in the number of applicants, Lewis says Harvard usually only accepts between three and eight homeschooled students each year, a number significantly lower than this year’s overall acceptance rate of 9.3 percent.

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A baker's dozen: The Diel family believes in working, plaing and praying together

Great story about life, love and learning in a large family... (HEFT ed)

by Amy Siewart (GMToday) Greater Milwaukee 4/13/06

Size does not appear to be an issue for the tight-knit family, whose household is efficiently run, family members are healthy and most importantly happy. It would make any small family stand up and applaud.

To grasp how many years Diane Diel was pregnant or with a baby in her arms, she was 20 when she had James and 45 when she had Joseph ó a quarter of a century. "When I had my first one it was a great experience and I thought one is just fine," Diane laughs. "It really has been a journey. I didnít know they would all come from me!" she exclaims. Early in their marriage, Jim and Diane thought they would possibly adopt children instead of conceiving their own.

That whole idea was set aside after several pregnancies occurred.


The entire Diel family including son James (left) holding his baby with his wife sitting behind him, gathered for this family photo during the 2005 holiday season.

"This is an area of our lives where we are going to trust God," Diane says. "Weíve been blessed. Theyíve all been healthy."

The couple began reading the Bible after experiencing some difficult times early in their marriage. "We started taking God at his word and in the Bible we read that children are a blessing," Diane explains.

New Article from (Pacific) Time Magazine - School's Out Forever

http://www.time.com/time/pacific/magazine/article/0,13673,503060417-1181679,00.html
Sunday, Apr. 09, 2006
It was several months before anastasia was born that her parents decided she wouldn't be going to school. Her mother, Katharina Russell-Head, had driven the idea, doubtful that schooling was the best way for children to learn. Without instruction, she reasoned, infants accomplish the astonishing feats of learning to walk and talk. "I wondered what would happen if you applied that same philosophy - just letting them be - to children after the age of five," she says. "Would they continue to do their job as children?" There's a twist in Russell-Head's case. A schoolteacher in Melbourne for 10 years before Anastasia came along, she might have been expected to regard teaching as a job best done by professionals. But that's not her view at all. While teacher training is worthwhile, she says, its main benefit is to prepare trainees for tutoring large groups. "Anyone can teach one-on-one," she says. "And my method wasn't really teaching, anyway. It was just being there." Academically, Anastasia seemed to thrive at home, an impression confirmed when - curious about school and keen to develop her musical talent - she started at the somewhat alternative Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School in Year 10. "She immediately excelled in everything," her mother says. "But after two weeks she came home and said, 'Mum, do you mind if I stop being top in everything? It's embarrassing.'" Anastasia is now 27 and concert manager at the Victorian College of the Arts. With her parents and sisters, she was a pioneer in a field that has grown markedly in Australia and New Zealand since the 1970s, when homeschooling reappeared after an absence of more than a century. Because a portion of homeschooling families choose not to tell authorities what they're doing, no one knows exactly how many children are involved in it. In Australia, estimates range from between 0.2% and 2% of the school-age population. Analysis of available numbers suggests the true figure is around 0.5% - or about 10,000 to 20,000 kids. Click on Title Above to read article.

Homeschooling Growing In Popularity

04/02/06

Homeschooling growing in popularity

NORTH PORT -- When his seventh-grade daughter was being bullied by classmates, John McKay took her out of public schools.

" I (felt) that the guidance counselors favored the bullies more than the ones being bullied," McKay said. Instead, the North Porter opted for homeschooling.

Leslie Valeska said she first started homeschooling when she found her son, now 14, was not being challenged enough in public schools.

"He was bored and the classes were not intense enough for him," she said. "Now I've been homeschooling him for four years, along with my three other children."

One of the surprises she found was how much her children support each other. "They all get excited when one of them gets a difficult concept or does something spectacular."

Families may choose homeschooling for many reasons.

Homeschooled Students Continue to Win

Wooly bugger: Lalor fly ties to first place
http://knox.villagesoup.com/sports/story.cfm?storyID=69727

Homeschool student wins top honors at math and science contest
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060326/NEWS01/603260311/1002

6th grader wins regional spelling bee
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/264469_spellingbee27.html

Home is where the learning is

Home is where the learning is
By Anne Matthews
TIMES CORRESPONDENT
Tricia Field's weekday mornings begin like many other mothers with young children in Pleasanton. After breakfast, she helps her preschooler and first grader get ready for school with her toddler in tow. Four days a week, she drops her 4-year-old daughter Carly off at morning preschool then heads back home.

It's at home where the real work begins as 6-year-old Tori begins her school day. With her mother's guidance and the blessing of the Pleasanton Unified School District, Tori is learning all that a first grader in a traditional school would learn, plus a little more.

Homegrown scholars

DailyPrincetonian.com
By Sophia Ahern Dwosh
Princetonian Senior Writer


Photo by Michael Zhang
(Expand Photo)
Homegrown scholars: Brian Brown '07. who was homeschooled as a child, shows a photograph of his family. Brown is one of about eight students at the University who were "Home Educated." Between one million to two million students nationwide are currently educated at home.
Before arriving at the University, Steve Apple '08 had not gone to school for a single day in his entire life.

A friend took Apple to his second grade classroom as part of a show-and-tell demonstration. "He stood me up there and said, 'Hey, this is my friend Steve. He's homeschooled. Talk to them, Steve!'" Apple recalled in an interview.

More than a decade later, though his peers no longer look at him as an outsider, Apple is still part of a small minority of students whose educational background has involved home-based schooling.

Homeschooling, sweet homeschooling

by Nathanel Blake (townhall.com)
Last week a New York Times article profiled the ordeal of academic applications: essays, interviews, application consultants, tuition of $10,000 a year or more, and the stress of separating families.

The article was about private preschools in New York City. The following is representative of the tribulations chronicled among well-heeled parents. "When Ms. Malloy, a federal prosecutor, applied for her twins, a boy and a girl, she asked her husband to write the application essay. "I was so nervous," she said, "and I'm someone who took the LSAT, who's written for the federal judiciary and in law review."

The family applied to four schools. "There's not a week that goes by that I don't regret that I didn't apply to three or four more," Ms. Malloy said. And so the hamster-wheel rat-race is now beginning at the ripe old age of two.

For me, reading this story increased my determination that if probability wins out and I marry and have children (I'm archaic enough to believe that to be the proper order), they will be homeschooled.

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A Peculiar People - Crunchy Cons

by Chuck Colson
Townhall.com
March 7, 2006


If you encountered someone who made his own granola, bought his veggies at a food co-op, wore Birkenstock sandals, and wanted to save the environment, if you’re like me, you’d probably think, well, there goes a lefty, or a liberal, or maybe an aging hippie. But the author of a new book says someone like that is just as likely to be a conservative Republican. In his book, Crunchy Cons, journalist Rod Dreher writes about a group of people he calls “crunchy conservatives,” a group that includes, among others, “hip homeschooling mamas,” “Birkenstocked Burkeans,” “gun-loving organic” farmers, and “right-wing nature lovers.”

What Dreher, a Dallas Morning News columnist, means by “crunchy conservative” is someone who rejects the “consumerist and individualistic mainstream of American life.” This rejection distinguishes their worldview from that of mainstream liberalism or conservatism, which, in Dreher’s estimation, are both “essentially materialist ideologies.”

The result of this materialism is “a society dedicated to the multiplication of wants and the intensification of desire, not the improvement of character.” What sets Dreher’s “crunchy cons” apart is the extent to which they have recognized the corrosive effects of a culture that is both materialistic and pornographic, and they are prepared to do something about it.

Debater has winning way with words

(Homeschool grad wins debate competition.)

Debater has winning way with words
By ASHLEY LOPES Features Writer
03/06/2006

BERKLEY - The friendly and outgoing Rebekah Barton was a force to be reckoned with when she stepped on stage, arguing her way to the top and bringing home the Regional Title for Bristol Community College in the brainy world of debate.

A newcomer to debate competitions, the 17-year-old sophomore at Bristol Community College, with a 3.9 grade point average, swept the Northeast Regional Debate Competition.

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She took home six trophies in addition to the several medals that adorned her neck.

"I felt confident with how I did, but I definitely wasn't expecting to win," Barton said. "It was absolutely shocking."

Winning awards in several areas including the debate section and an oral interpretation events, the accomplishment which Barton is most proud of is the regional title, which now sits in a trophy case at her college.

"I was putting in crazy hours of preparation, and this just makes me feel like all my work has paid off," Barton said.

"While all my friends went out, I would stay home on a Saturday night because I had a debate the next day. That's when I realized, 'wow I really am a dork.'"

Fourteen schools participated in this all-day event, and Barton and her partner beat out well-respected colleges such as Bridgewater State, Suffolk and Cornell.

Her mother, Michele Barton, was disappointed about missing the awards ceremony, but was elated to see Barton walk in the door with a box full of her accomplishments.

"I wish I could have seen it," the proud mother said. "She came home with a huge box full of trophies. We are so proud of her because she worked so hard for it."

Barton was awarded second place, won third place for dramatic interpretation, first place for critical analysis and first place for the Pentathelon - a combination of points from all areas of competition.

Barton first became involved with the Forensics and Debate Team through an introduction to speech course she took where she met the team's coach, went to one of their meetings and thought it was interesting.

"Basically, you get a resolution and then you have 15 minutes to put together a case with your partner," Barton said. "It is definitely a challenge. Stressful but fun."

Home-schooled since she was in the fifth grade, Barton entered college at the ripe age of 16.

Homeschooling grows quickly in the United States

Thursday, March 2, 2006; Posted: 9:51 a.m. EST (14:51 GMT)



COLUMBIA, Maryland (Reuters) -- Elizabeth and Teddy Dean are learning about the Italian scientist Galileo, so they troop into the kitchen, where their mother Lisa starts by reviewing some facts about the Renaissance.

Elizabeth, 11, and Teddy, 8, have never gone to school.

Their teachers are primarily their parents, which puts them into what is believed to be the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. education system -- the homeschool movement.

Read this article at CNN by clicking on the title.

Through the Eyes of Genius

BY MIKE ANGELL

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 2/28/2006

A demanding boss is a bane to most workers. But for Willard Boyle, that demanding boss was a springboard.

Boyle's boss was Jack Morton, vice president of electronics technology for AT&T's storied research unit, Bell Labs. Boyle headed its work in semiconductors and transistors.

Morton called Boyle one day in October 1969 asking what he was working on. Unsatisfied with Boyle's answer, Morton said another Bell Labs' unit was doing interesting things. Why couldn't Boyle come up with something interesting?

His boss' prodding got to Boyle. Determined not to be left behind in the innovation arena, Boyle and his colleague, George Smith, got to work.

Their drive led them to come up with one of the most important inventions of the century: the charge-coupled device, or CCD. The CCD is the heart behind digital cameras and video recorders, space-based telescopes and satellites, and medical imaging devices.

Boyle says a combination of many factors helped propel him in his many achievements: the ability to think freely, a nurturing of his intellectual curiosity, a collaborative working environment where ideas were shared, and even hurdles sometimes presented by colleagues.

"Having the freedom to pursue ideas was very important to me," Boyle said in a recent IBD interview.

Early Lessons

Boyle spent his childhood in a remote logging town in Quebec where, during the winters, the only way to get around was by dog sled. The cold, bleak winters of that town helped forge Boyle's determination. He had to wake up in the middle of pitch-black, wintry nights to go feed the sled dogs in their kennel. The utter blackness terrified Boyle, but someone had to feed the dogs, so he had to soldier on.

His mother home-schooled Boyle until high school. Even though his lessons were only an hour a day, Boyle's mother made them count. She provided him with most any book he wanted. After reading, his mother held discussion sessions to talk about what he learned and what new things he wanted to explore in subsequent books.

Boyle found inspiration in his reading. He credits scientist and author Lancelot Hogben with first stimulating his interest in science. Hogben's books on math and science were written clearly and applied the fields' abstract ideas to everyday phenomenon.
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The Quiet Ambush by Suzannah Rowntree

Homeschooling is Threatened Down-Under

The Quiet Ambush


by Suzannah Rowntree


In Victoria, Australia, the State Parliament is considering an Education and Training Reform Bill for a new Education Act which will completely rework the existing Act.

Among other changes, homeschoolers will now be more strictly regulated. Up till now, homeschoolers in Victoria have only been required to provide regular and efficient instruction for their children and to be able to prove it if challenged, under Division 8A of the Community Services Act of 1970 School Attendance. No other state in Australia shows such lenience to homeschoolers, and in this environment homeschooling has flourished.

Unfortunately, this is about to change. Under the new Education Reform Bill, a current draft of which can be found here, Victorian homeschoolers will be required to apply for a homeschooling licence and comply with any (as-yet undisclosed) regulations the government thinks fit. Anyone disobeying these unspecified regulations will have their licence revoked. Anyone refusing to apply for a licence to homeschool will be charged with starting an unregistered school and will be fined $1048.10 in Australian dollars. Alternately, they can be fined $104.81 per day per child for truancy. Possibly both fines will apply.

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When homeschoolers grow up

Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld

Posted: February 4, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Parents interested in homeschooling often want to know what will happen to their children when they grow up and have to work for a living. Will employers recognize their homespun high-school diplomas signed by Mom and Dad and the local homeschool association? Will corporate America welcome them as competent "human resources"? Will the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force accept them? All legitimate questions which deserve to be answered.

Well, the answers were recently given by Dr. Brian Ray, director of the National Home Education Research Institute of Salem, Ore. – the authoritative source the media turn to when they want homeschool data. Dr. Ray, himself a homeschooling dad, studied 5,247 home-educated graduates and found that 49 percent were in college and the remaining 51 percent were earning their way in a wide variety of occupations. Over 10 percent were pursuing such prestigious professional careers as doctors, ministers, accountants, nurses, school and college teachers, and the like.
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The lessons of school choice

WND Exclusive Commentary The lessons of school choice
Rebecca Hagelin

Posted: February 21, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Choosing how your children are educated should be as routine in America as the ability to choose your neighborhood, your church and your place of employment.

It stuns me that in 2006, the vast majority of students in failing schools are still trapped there. My husband and I have enjoyed the marvelous blessing of choosing freely between private schools, public schools and home schooling for our children. Yet, the reality for most parents is no real choice at all.

The No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2002 by a large majority of Congress, was aimed at correcting the "soft bigotry of low expectations," in President Bush's memorable phrase. Academic achievement would be boosted by demanding accountability – and educators would be held accountable by testing students regularly and measuring their progress. The parents of students in failing schools were supposed to have at least some choice to move to schools that perform.

Creative Class: Homeschooling and Affluent Kids

February 27, 2006
Lori Mortimer

Once considered the domain of only deeply religious families who didn't want to send their kids to secular schools, homeschooling has been gaining popularity among not-particularly-religious families. In "Meet My Teachers: Mom and Dad," Business Week covers the growth of homeschooling specifically within the "creative class."

According to Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class, the creative class consists of educated, affluent people who, um, "create for a living":

[They]...seek not only fulfilling jobs, but also tolerant and vibrant communities and cities. This new class of workers does not define itself by national boundaries, but is highly mobile, willing to relocate for the best social, cultural, and economic opportunities. The creative class, 38 million strong in the U.S., produces a disproportionate share of wealth, accounting for nearly half of all wages and salaries earned - as much as the manufacturing and service sectors combined.
Sounds like a pretty good life:

Meet My Teachers: Mom and Dad

BusinessWeek Online
2/20/2006

A growing number of affluent parents think they can do better than any school

Slater Aldrich doesn't attend any of the top-shelf public or private schools near his family's Madison (Conn.) home, not even his mother's alma mater, the $18,000-a-year Country School. Instead, the 11-year-old spends his days playing the role of town zoning officer, researching the pros and cons of granting approval to a new Wal-Mart (WMT ). Other endeavors include pretending he's a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist, creating Excel-studded business plans for a backyard sheep company, and growing his own organic food. "It's kind of like living on a white-collar farm," says his dad, Clark Aldrich. Aldrich vowed he'd never put his kid through the eye-glazing lectures he endured in school, even at prestigious institutions like Lawrence Academy and Brown University.

Like a growing number of creative-class parents, the Aldriches homeschool Slater, splitting the duties. (Aldrich père, who co-founded interactive learning company SimuLearn, handles math and science; his wife, Lisa, a stay-at-home mom, does the reading and writing. Slater's friends come over after school and on the weekends for pickup games.)

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Homechooling Provides its Own Therapy for Special Needs Kids

By Tonya Poole, 2-11-06

One afternoon three years ago in Albuquerque, we learned from the back of a brown paper grocery bag that my then nine-year-old daughter Sarah has autism. We unloaded groceries as we read, putting fewer and fewer cans and breads and teas away as we made it further down the list: vocal ‘stimming’ or chanting; extreme resistance to and/or distress at change in routine; ‘flapping’ arms and/or hands; becoming easily and markedly distressed for no visible reason; unusually focused fascination on specific subjects or objects; frequent repetitive behaviors; coordination and motor difficulties; noticeable lack of natural fears and presence of unnatural fears; delay in and difficulty following set of instructions …


Read the entire article outlining one family's struggle to get the help they needed and their ultimate (and brave) decision to homeschool... by clicking on the title

Former science chief: MMR fears coming true (Autism and other problems related to vaccine)

Daily Mail (UK)
By Sue Corrigan, Mail on Sunday 5th Feb 2006

Former Government medical officer responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe has accused the Government of "utterly inexplicable complacency" over the MMR triple vaccine for children.

Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, "the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history".

He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for parents' lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see.


He said he has seen a "steady accumulation of evidence" from scientists worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in certain children.

But he added: "There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves."

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