FOCUS: HOME SCHOOLING
Staying home for school is a growing trend
Some home-schooled kids outperform their peers
Faith McDonald is ready for her first day of school.
Her pencils are sharpened, and she’s sitting up straight at her desk.
A second-grader, Faith is learning her vowels, and the teacher wastes no time starting the day’s lesson.
In the next room, her brother Justin’s eighth-grade class is working on pre-algebra.
Whenever Faith or Justin need a break, they simply hit the pause button on their DVD players.
These two students are among a growing number of children who are homeschooled. Across the country, many of them outperform their public school counterparts academically. And colleges and universities are now targeting homeschooled students in their recruitment plans.
A report released in 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U. S. Department of Education, showed that 1.1 million students were home-schooled in 2003 — the most recent year for which data is available — up from an estimated 850,000 in 1999. Other estimates put the number as high as 2 million.
“In 1996, when we started, there were three or four families in the district that home-schooled. Now you’re meeting people everywhere,” said Lisa Melin, a mother in the Cheektowaga-Sloan School District who educates her four children at home.
The most recent figures for Western New York show that 3,101 students were home-schooled in the 2004-05 school year, compared with 2,698 in 2000-01. In Buffalo, only 0.8 percent of students — or about 300 kids — were home-schooled in 2004-05, up from 0.3 percent in 2000-01.
Proponents of home-schooling laud the students’ academic success. For example, the Home School Legal Defense Association reported that 23 percent of home-schooled students are instructed at one grade level ahead of their public school counterparts.
Justin, whose family lives in North Tonawanda, took a state standardized test in seventh grade and scored at a 10th-grade level.
He said he likes his family’s choice and wouldn’t want to attend public school.
“[I] get a lot of extra free time. [I] get the rest of the day mostly off because we get done really early,” the 13- year-old said.
Even though home-schooled students are not required to take Regents exams or state standardized tests, parents like the McDonalds and the Melins like to see how their children compare with public school students.
Paige Melin — a 16-year-old senior who this year will be attending public school full time for the first time — scored 100 on her English Regents exam in her junior year without ever stepping into a public school classroom.
Parents admit they don’t always have the answers to their children’s questions, especially when it comes to high school courses, but they have resources either through their local school districts or the collections of home-school family networks.
Donald A. Ogilvie, district superintendent for Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services, points out that there’s something to be said for a little separation between parent and child.
“I recognized the need for my kids [who are now grown] to have a break from me, and to have me 24/7 would not have been in their best interest or my best interest,” Ogilvie said.
“My kids have learned invaluable things from teachers [who] are not me, from classmates who are not their siblings, and I think we have many obligations to our children and one of them is to encourage embracing a broader world than is provided within our homes.”
But home-schooling families see value in keeping their kids at home.
The Melins wanted to keep the family together longer, “for the kids to be their own best friends,” said dad Peter Melin. And it seems to be working.
“I noticed [public school] kids don’t spend as much time with their families. They’re not as close with their siblings. I’m really close with mine,” Paige said.
Rickilynn and Doug McDonald educate their children at home for religious reasons.
“They’ve taken creation out of textbooks and put in evolution. . . . I thought, you know what, I could home-school them and have the curriculum we want,” Rickilynn McDonald said.
Audra and R. J. Wynne, of Grand Island, considered home-schooling when they were looking for preschools for their oldest child, Emily, now 13.
“I met someone who home-schooled, and I was very impressed with this lady and her kids, how well they got along. The kids were well-behaved.” said Audra Wynne.
Now, all the Wynne children — Emily; Brian, 10; and David, 6 — are home-schooled.
Because parents who home-school are only required by the state to register with their school district and report quarterly grades, they are able to use a variety of instructional methods.
The McDonalds use a DVD curriculum from a Christian-based organization. All the instructors have at least a master’s degree and are filmed teaching students in a classroom, which gives home-schooled students the feeling they are part of a group.
The Melins use a curriculum called Beka Books, which is supplemented with CDs. And the Wynnes use lesson plans from Seton Home School in Virginia that include books and workbooks supplemented with DVDs.
Since so many home-schooled students are high achievers, small colleges and large universities are courting them more vigorously every year.
At Columbia College, a small private school in Missouri, the admissions department has a counselor assigned directly to home-schooled students.
“The home-school students we see coming here are certainly very elite students,” said Kathy Monnig, the Columbia counselor. “Probably the biggest difference we see in [them] is they are a lot more successful at the college level because they’re already used to working independently.”
The college is also looking for students who are socialized, which has been seen as a weakness of home-schooling.
But the families The Buffalo News interviewed said they routinely get their kids involved in athletic and social events through the towns they live in, the churches they attend and other venues.
“They’re not shut-ins. They’re out there in the community,” said Peter Melin, an attorney. “Socialization is not a problem at all.”
The Wynnes called the socialization argument “baseless.”
“My kids are done with school by lunch, and they have the rest of the day to pursue hobbies, play outside, play with each other and other kids their age. They have time to be kids,” said Audra Wynne.
“It’s hard to do all that when you’re a kid and go to a regular school. Your day is so used up,” said R. J. Wynne.
Even though their children aren’t enrolled in local schools, parents can turn to the school district for help.
Lisa Melin said that the district has provided books, resources and even allowed Paige to attend review classes for eighth-grade science.
“Cheektowaga-Sloan is very vested in the kids’ education. If I need them, I can call them up and they help me out,” she said.
Cheektowaga-Sloan Superintendent James Mazgajewski said that “the Melins have taken on that task and have done a great job. A few haven’t done as well.” He added that the difficulty of home-schooling is getting through the massive curriculum students need in order to get into college.
“There’s quite a bit of material there, and it’s not easy to make sure the material is getting handled correctly and that the students are learning everything they need to learn. It’s difficult,” he said.
