Published: January 10, 2009 05:25 pm      

Trend to go home for school is on the rise across Indiana, nation

Stay-at-home scholars

The face of education continues to increase and change with the times, from one-room schoolhouses to multimillion dollar buildings. Now, more and more parents are finding that their children’s perfect educational setting is not found in a building, but rather a home.

Their home.

The idea of home schooling is not new. However, it’s growing at a rapid rate, nationally as well as in Indiana. In the United States, an estimated 1.5 million children were home schooled in 2007, an increase of 74 percent since 1999, according to a press release from Indiana University School of Education. The latest numbers in Indiana were 23,455 students in 2005-06, a 429 percent increase from 10 years earlier, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

Experts speculate different reasons for the growth, such as the increase of virtual education on the Internet, said Indiana University professor Robert Kunzman, the author of a forthcoming book on home schooling called “Write these Laws on your Children,” which is due to be out this summer.

Home school families do have rules set by the state. They have to keep attendance, provide at least 180 days of instruction and give their children an education equivalent or better than that available in public schools. However, beyond that, they are on their own.

Two families met with The Evening News and The Tribune to tell their side as to what led them to choose home schooling and what their experiences were like. These are their stories.



INSIDE HOME SCHOOLS

STARTING OUT

FAMILY 1: Two children home schooled through graduation

Debbie Harbeson, of Sellersburg, had a son in first grade and a daughter in second grade in public school when she decided her children needed a different route to receive their education.

“I was just dissatisfied,” she explained as to why she chose to home school. “I didn’t see where they were really getting anything out of school and getting individual attention.”

She started off buying some workbooks and taking many trips to the library.

“It was a little scary those first few days,” Harbeson said. “It shouldn’t have been different than any other day, but it felt a lot different because they were, ‘supposed to be in school.’”

Not everything always went according to plan. She recorded her early experiences, with some added humor, in a book, available for free download at www.timeforbedlam.com. In that, she talks about how she taught hands-on lessons to her children, whether it be covering her son with flour — so he could look like a scientist — or dissecting cow eyeballs.

Harbeson said it is those types of lessons that benefited her children more than their previous educational environment.

“It’s more fun and it’s more interesting to them,” she said. “Plus, I think they learn a lot more.”

They kept wanting more, too. Harbeson let her children decide whether to continue with home schooling or to go to a traditional school while pursuing their education. Both choose to continue and are now college graduates.





FAMILY 2: One child partially home schooled and now in public school, another child still being home schooled

Sandy Dolan, of Greenville, started home schooling for similar reasons. Dolan’s youngest daughter had just finished second grade when she made her decision.

“The school was crowded at that time and the community was growing. The classrooms were getting larger,” Dolan said. “I volunteered at the school and I could see that it just wasn’t working well for her. She didn’t do well in an environment with a large class size.

“We looked at our options and home schooling was a natural fit for us. She needed more individual attention.”

Though her older daughter, Anna, was doing good in school, she and Anna opted to home school for seventh and eighth grades. Anna then decided to go to public high school, where she could pursue more of her interests, such as orchestra.

However, the younger of the two, Carly, who is now 17, decided to stick with it.

“I think it turned out great for her,” Sandy said of Carly. “She’s an independent thinker. She has been able to get out and explore her options outside the classroom. She’s a visual, hands-on learner and that’s how she learns best.”



SOCIALIZATION

Harbeson said the issue of how to socialize her children was the final hurdle she had to deal with in making her decision to home school. However, she said it was much different than she thought.

“I realized that it’s not really in school that the kids are really making their relationships,” she said. “They develop relationships with kids they do things with after school, such as sleepovers and sports. We just got involved in things that kids did outside of school.”

Looking back, she said thinking that public schools socialize kids has a little irony.

“It’s funny when you think about it,” Harbeson said. “Anytime a kid tries to socialize during school, they’re told ‘Be quiet, you aren’t here to socialize!’”



COST

Both parents said the cost is really up to the educator. Textbooks can be hundreds of dollars. However, the library is free. Harbeson said with today’s technology, some lessons are even available for free on video via www.youtube.com. There are also home schooling groups on the Internet who share resources and more.



DOES IT WORK?

Both parents said they allowed their children to pursue personal interests, learning what they wanted to learn. They said they were there to help make that possible, by providing materials, field trips and more.

The two said that helped encourage their children’s natural curiosity, which they both believe can be stifled in the institutional school setting.

Keith Harbeson, Debbie’s son, is now 23 years old. He started home schooling at the beginning of his first-grade year and continued through high school. He got his taste on how an institutional educational system works while attending Purdue University.

He said the switch from home school to college caused some anxieties at first.

“I was a little nervous about it, because I knew it would be a new experience,” he said. “But actually, it went fairly smooth. All the studying at home prepared me a lot for what college expected of you. You spend time in class, but professors expect you to spend much more time on your own studying.”

He said he felt better prepared than some of his peers, who got through high school without having to do much work outside the classroom.

Keith said he did have to resolve some common misconceptions about home schooled students with his peers, such as the socialization issue.

“They have the assumption that you don’t have a lot of social interaction and would talk about the only friends I had were my sister and mom, but they didn’t say anything about any lack of preparation [with education],” he said.

However, he was able to tell people that he had many friends from jobs, volunteering, sports and more.

“We have plenty of opportunities besides school to get social interaction and to meet people,” he added. “In fact, whenever you’re in high school, you’re spending a lot of your time in class.”

If given the chance to go back, Keith said he would choose home school all over again. He’s such a believer in how it works, he hopes to also do the same when he has children.

“I’d like to, but it also depends on the person I marry and if she is willing to support it,” he said. “If it was purely my decision, I’d definitely say yes. The fact that it gives you a different attitude about learning and it prepares you better for the real world and learning things on your own ... But the primary reason is that it would allow my kids to pursue their interests more efficiently and just learn better.”



IN HINDSIGHT

“Is there anything I would change? It’s hard to say, because I’m so amazingly happy with how everything turned out,” Debbie said. “I wish I just hadn’t worried so much that things would turn out OK. It was one of the best decisions that I could have made.”

She said it also helped her to spend more quality time with her children.

“It worked out really well for our family,” Debbie added.

“I don’t think home schooling is for everybody, but for us, it was a perfect fit,” Sandy said.

Both said there are plenty of resources out there to help make the transition easier, such as books and even a Yahoo group that connects home school families.



THE “AVERAGE” HOME SCHOOLER

Though the two families started home schooling for similar reasons, no two home schools are the same.

Teaching at home can involve a parent performing the role of a teacher, lectures from experts in different fields, hands-on experiences with field trips, lectures recorded on DVD, students learning from textbooks and much, much more.

Kunzman said as different as the instruction can be, there is no accurate way to measure and compare how home school students do as a whole compared to those taught in public/private schools, even though some studies have tried to prove otherwise.

He said those who volunteer to participate in surveys on home schooling tend to be a very small percentage of those asked. Those results are often compared to the entire public school population, he added.

“It's really not a valid comparison,” Kunzman said. "What we find with home schooling is that there is no typical home schooler. It's as varied as a public school student profile would be.”

He said it also is an issue that not all families report their children as receiving their education at home.

"Representations about the average home schooler performing at this or that level are simply incorrect, because we don't even know who all the home schoolers are,” Kunzman added.



WHAT’S NEXT IN EDUCATION?

Kunzman said the increasing number of home schoolers may be an indication that it’s time to reconsider the definition of education.

“It may include sitting down at the computer, it may include going to a home school cooperative, it may include learning something that doesn't look like formal schooling, and then yet you'd be hard pressed to argue that it isn't education in a significant sense,” he said. “So I think that the rise of school choice more generally and the home school sector in particular are questioning all sorts of delivery models for what we mean by education in the 21st century."



ONLINE

• www.indianahomeschoolers.com: A Yahoo group that connects home schoolers around the state.

• www.indiana.edu/~homeeduc: A Web site dedicated to provide unbiased home schooling research and scholarship information, created by Indiana University professor Robert Kunzman, the author of a forthcoming book on home schooling called “Write these Laws on your Children,” which is due to be out this summer.

• www.doe.in.gov/sservices/homeschool.html: This site is from the Indiana Department of Education. It lists tips for getting started with home schooling as well as the laws.



A GROWING TREND

These are the numbers for home schooled students in Indiana over the past two decades:

Year............Enrollment

2005-06......23,455

2004-05......22,403

2003-04......22,049

2002-03......21,068

2001-02......19,215

2000-01......17,575

1999-00......14,529

1998-99......10,989

1997-98........7,140

1996-97........5,428

1995-96........4,430

1994-95........4,289

1993-94........3,326

1992-93........2,533

1991-92........1,965

1990-91........1,462

1989-90........1,148

1988-89...........882

1987-88...........667

1986-87...........516

1985-86...........386

1984-85...........143



GETTING STARTED

• RESEARCH HOME EDUCATION

Before you withdraw your child from a traditional school, learn all you can. Talk to other home educators, read books about home education, learn about home school law in Indiana and "comparison shop" for a curriculum for your school.

• WITHDRAW YOUR CHILD AND NOTIFY HIS OR HER CURRENT PRINCIPAL, IN WRITING, OF YOUR DECISION

You do need to let the public school know why your child is no longer in attendance, or he or she may be considered truant.

• REQUEST A COPY OF YOUR CHILD'S PUBLIC SCHOOL RECORDS

You are entitled to a copy of these public school records, both as a school administrator and as the parent of a minor child, under state law and the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Please note that this does not apply to private school records.

• NOTIFY THE INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OF YOUR GRADE LEVEL ENROLLMENT

Indiana law requires all private school administrators, including home educators, to notify the IDOE of their schools' grade level enrollments upon request of the state superintendent of public instruction.



HOME SCHOOL LAW

• 180 DAYS OF INSTRUCTION

You decide which days your school will be in session and how long to teach each day. In the case of mid-year transfers, days attended at the first school count toward the 180 day total at the home school.

• ATTENDANCE RECORDS

There is no special form for these records, which are used to verify private school attendance. Please note that the law allows local public school superintendents to request copies of your child's attendance records to verify attendance.

• INSTRUCTION EQUIVALENT TO THAT GIVEN IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

State law does not define equivalency of instruction for public or private schools. If there is ever a question of educational neglect, keeping good attendance records and other documentation regarding attendance and continuing educational activity is highly instrumental in addressing these concerns.

• CURRICULUM

State law exempts home schools from the curriculum and program requirements which public schools must follow.

Indiana law gives home educators the flexibility to choose the curriculum and textbooks they feel will most benefit their children.





GENERAL INFORMATION

• HOME EDUCATED STUDENTS ARE NOT DROPOUTS

They are transfer students who keep their driver’s licenses upon withdrawal.

• KINDERGARTEN

While encouraged, kindergarten is not mandatory in Indiana. Home educated children are to begin school no later than their seventh birthday.

• TESTING

State law does not require ISTEP, or any other testing, for children in home schools. The Department of Education recommends periodic, standardized achievement testing for home schooled children.

• GRADUATION

Home schooled children will not receive a diploma from the local public school or from the state. The IDOE suggests you use an accredited correspondence program which grants a diploma upon completion. Students who are issued a diploma by the administrator (parent or legal guardian) of an Indiana home school possess a legally issued, non-accredited diploma according to the state of Indiana.

— SOURCE: Indiana Department of Education