This article from the Washington Post looks at what it refers to as the "sleeping giant" of America's education system...home-schooling. According to the article, 1.7 million children are currently being home-schooled and this number has been growing by about 9% each year for the last ten years. The big question about home-schooled children is whether or not they receive the same quality of education as children attending public schools.

Follow up:

The fear of many publilc school educators is that they may not be. The parents of home-schooled children must have the best intentions but do they have the experience? Regulation by the government of home-schooling has gone down in the last few years, but will this always be the case? Because good data of home-schooled situations is hard to come by, a man named Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Education and a former high school teacher, decided to do a study and write a book about this subject. Kunzman observed six home-schooling families from around the country and found both good and bad practices, just like in any public school. And, he did not concur with popular opinion that homeschooled children are not being socialized in the same way as children who attend public school. He did find, however, that parents tend to teach and focus on what they know, leaving less familiar subjects neglected.

As far as regulation goes, Kunzman says this is only justified when 1) vital interests of children or society are at stake, 2) there is general consensus on standards for meeting those interests, and 3) there is an effective way to measure whether those standards are met. So how is academic accountability for home-schoolers best achieved? According to Kunzman, the answer is to test these children on basic skills, just as public school children are tested.

As a former public school teacher myself I admit that I have always had the same concerns about home-schooled children...are they being taught all subjects, are they being socialized? After reading this article though, I agree with it and realize that bad teaching is something that can happen both in the home environment and in the school environment. But, as this article states, as the number of home-schooled children increases, this will continue to be a subject of much debate.