Homeschooling In The United States

The percent of children receiving their education at home has increased since the 1960’s. However, during the course of history, children have been schooled at home. Yet with the industrial revolution homeschooling declined. The reason for the resurgence was the social and political activism of the 60’s. The desegregation of schools, the removal of prayer, and book’s like How Children Fail, by John Holt, blaming public schools for not educating children (Cook, Lane, Mataras, 2013).
A second resurgence in homeschooling happed in the 1990’s with it legal in every state. Although, all K-12 programs must be approved by the state and they may make decisions about how they support homeschool children with disabilities. The Supreme Court upheld the Nevada school system’s denial of services for a homeschool child, while, states such as
Arizona, Iowa, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania have laws that include provisions for disabled students that are homeschooled (Cook, Lane, Mataras, 2013).
Parents benefits from homeschooling.
While, many main reasons maybe religious perspectives, better instruction, individualization attention or philosophical differences with public education they may not be the only. Parents may choose the set of courses, the pace of instruction and the daily routine (Cook, Lane, Mataras, 2013). Set of courses can be geared to if the student is blind, deaf, has epilepsy or has no arms. The pace of instruction allows the parent to stay with a subject to the student knows it, weather it is one hour or one month. The daily routine allows the parents to consider for example speech or physical therapy that may be provided by a professional.
There can be many challenges to homeschooling one’s child(ren). They can lack emotional, social, and moral support from outside sources. This can leave the parents feeling overwhelmed with sadness and frustration (Cook, Lane, Mataras, 2013). A big part of this is that educators tend to have a negative view of homeschooling. For example, administrators may rather that parents keep their child in the school and work to resolve problems.
Parents income, language, &
education
Additional challenges may come in the form of income, language, & education of the parents. Income can be a barrier for those who are low-income because one parent may need to be a stay-at-home parent in order to homeschool. Low-come households may need all adults in the home to work or do without, making it a hard choose for parent(s) who want to school their child(ren) at home. Middle- and high-income households may have it easier for a parent to stay-at-home or in some cases hire someone to homeschool their child(ren).
Language can be barrier for the parent if they do not speak the most common language of the country they live in. in the U.S. that would be English but that may be the only language barrier. If the child is deaf they need to know how to communicate within the deaf community, this area the parent may lack. Another area may be a language the child wants to learn but the parent does not know.
Education make homeschooling a challenge for parents who may themselves have only a high school education. In "Crying Doesn't Work": Emotion and Parental Involvement of Working Class Mothers Raising Children with Developmental Disabilities, Joy, a mother of a child with a disability found being an advocate a “career” with on-the-job training, homeschooling is no different. Regardless of the parents own education, are increased technology can provide instructional support for both parent and child.
There is a verity of ways to homeschool. Three ways are short term, those that do so because they are unhappy with the local school system, and cyber charter schools.
Choosing to homeschool a child for the short term owing to the severity of their physical and/or emotional problems (Shirley, Jenkins, 1961). This option would be best for those whose children need short term help to resolve issues to get them back in the classroom. For the school it may need to make the school accessible or hire aids for the students. For the student this would allow them to get one on one help to they can function in the classroom. Short term homeschooling can help students who have temporary issues. For example, the student has just lost a limb or ended up in wheelchair. Homeschooling for the short term can help them not only adjust but not have problems if they are missing a lot school.
Two major groups of parents that are unhappy with school and are choosing homeschooling are those with children on the autism spectrum and those who have learning disabilities. One place that parents have had issues is with schools unable or unwilling to provide a treatment when parents find a therapy, method, or program they establish to be effective. A reason for problems is that schools tend to have 20-30 children per classroom. As a result, children with autism can be over-stimulated in such classes. Add that teachers struggle with teaching all these students and are not always trained to work with these children (Hurlbutt, 2010). Hurlbutt gives five reasons why homeschool works for students with autism. They “include: instruction which provides for optimal learning and maximized progress”.