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I haven't found a thread that asks this question, so I thought I'd launch this as a discussion topic. I read recently that the average homeschooled child costs about $600 a year to educate, while a publicly-school child costs $9000-$10,000 a year to educate. And yet, there's a great deal of evidence which demonstrates that homeschooled children do just as well, if not better than public-schooled kids.
The question is thus - in the interest of saving money, shouldn't local and state governments do all they can to promote the homeschool movement, seeing how it's so much cheaper and quite possibly more effective?
Even if parents were offered a credit of $5000 a year per child, that would basically cut costs in half for public schooling for those children, and it would enable many more parents to educate their children at home (considering they're having to forego working at a job, etc.) Would this be a good idea or no?
Currently, about 3% of school-age children in the USA are being homeschooled - if this was increased to say, 10%, or even 15% - it would certainly take the pressure off overloaded school districts - no need to keep building new school buildings (or those horrible trailers they use around here). It'd be easier to have smaller class sizes with fewer students in the system, and with more parents having the flexibility to homeschool, perhaps many children would be spared bullying (which goes on despite our best attempts to eradicate it) and misdiagnosing of ADHD just because they fidget a bit too much in class.
Am I on the right track here, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
I totally support homeschooling, because I think that parents should have the ultimate say over the education of their children, and because I think that competition in the education marketplace will improve all schools, be they public, private, charter, home, etc.
Offering a credit would help at the margins; people who are considering home schooling and would like to do it, and wouldn't take too much of a financial hit from having one parent quit their job. I don't think it would dramatically inflate the ranks of home schoolers; but it would certainly help those who want to go that route, and would help the overall public budget as well, for the reasons you stated.
That said, plenty of parents don't want to home school, and even an extra $5,000 would not be enough incentive for them to take the plunge. So I would be surprised if you could get the home school proportion up to 15% of the total. But I do think it's worth trying.
No, we should not give incentives for homeschooling, and here's why.
I think homeschooling is terrific, but only when done correctly by invested parents. Right now the bar to get into homeschooling is pretty high, you have to register, do paperwork, keep records, etc, and it's not completely user friendly or cheap (one parent usually has to forgo paid employment). Which limits the current homeschoolers to MOSTLY the folks who take it seriously. The parents who research curriculum, plan, teach, track progress, and care about their kids' progress. This is why currently homeschoolers do so well.
But if you start giving people money to homeschool and to get kids out of public schools, what do you think is going to happen? Who is going to be motivated to take the money? And what do you think they're going to do with it? And what will happen to those poor kids who now can't even go to school because then their parents would lose their "beer money"?
No, we should not give incentives for homeschooling, and here's why.
I think homeschooling is terrific, but only when done correctly by invested parents. Right now the bar to get into homeschooling is pretty high, you have to register, do paperwork, keep records, etc, and it's not completely user friendly or cheap (one parent usually has to forgo paid employment). Which limits the current homeschoolers to MOSTLY the folks who take it seriously. The parents who research curriculum, plan, teach, track progress, and care about their kids' progress. This is why currently homeschoolers do so well.
But if you start giving people money to homeschool and to get kids out of public schools, what do you think is going to happen? Who is going to be motivated to take the money? And what do you think they're going to do with it? And what will happen to those poor kids who now can't even go to school because then their parents would lose their "beer money"?
Yeah. Very very bad idea.
You've got a good point there. You could mandate testing, and have educators check up on the parents to make sure they're doing a good job, but that'd certainly eat into the savings of not having the kid in public schools.
Perhaps the state could provide free educational materials and support, but no cash assistance.
Some kids thrive with it especially with the advent of virtual schools to help in this area.
Public school benefits the middle of the road pack. Those needing extra help and those needing further challenges could benefit greatly from homeschooling mixed with virtual schools.
Another reason I brought this up is that I've been reading about how schools skimp on recess now, (and people wonder why child obesity is such a problem now) - and kids are forced to sit still for hours and hours, when they really need to move for a large part of the day. I know I'd gone ballistic if I didn't have recess when I was in school - I'd been bouncing off the walls...lol.
Homeschooling at least gives children to run and play, like they're meant to, and families can take vacations at off-peak times, not to mention taking them to museums and cultural events to further their learning.
It's a wonder that only 3% of children are being homeschooled, I honestly thought it was a lot more than that.
I have no idea where you got the cost per student, but I am guessing it is not correct for the actual homeschool cost across the board.
I am homeschooling 2 kids, both in 7th grade now. I expect the cost will go up as they need more science lab classes/supplies in high school, but this is what we incur as costs now:
Science book plus workbook $60 + $15
lab supplies, estimating $50
Field trip --Went on a one day whale watching trip $20
Field Trip --Went on a one day boat lab class--caught microscopic organisms in a net and viewed with a microscope, biologist teacher on boat $60
PE, weekly lessons (martial arts) at $15 a week = $645 for the school year
Surfing Lessons $60
Social Studies: Book $69, plus workbook $18
Living History Field Trips--3 - $50 each
Museum, $18
Mythology Book $35
Writing Book, Spelling Book $16, $12
Greek cards and book $33
Math Book $68
Math Computer License $99
Culinary Arts elective--Chef's academy for kids $30 / week = $1350
plus art and craft supplies and special interest
Plus general school supplies--paper etc.
So the total with out the general supplies or 'project' costs is $2778.
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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I homeschooled my 3 children, while working f/t, from birth thru high school. Two have graduated college and third is midway thru----at 16.
I would have loved cash; but I would've also loved a tax credit, for even a portion of what was given to the school for each of my children.
I also would have appreciated having access to things my local school district denied us b/c my kids didn't attend the school, despite the fact that the schools were still getting money for my kids.
For example, my homeschool group (comprised entirely of kids who would have attended that particular school) was denied use of the gym; despite the fact that other local organizations were allowed to use it. We were denied resources, like the school's library, nor were our children allowed to participate in extracurricular sports.
We worked around all of those obstacles, but still.....
I haven't found a thread that asks this question, so I thought I'd launch this as a discussion topic. I read recently that the average homeschooled child costs about $600 a year to educate, while a publicly-school child costs $9000-$10,000 a year to educate. And yet, there's a great deal of evidence which demonstrates that homeschooled children do just as well, if not better than public-schooled kids.
The question is thus - in the interest of saving money, shouldn't local and state governments do all they can to promote the homeschool movement, seeing how it's so much cheaper and quite possibly more effective?
Even if parents were offered a credit of $5000 a year per child, that would basically cut costs in half for public schooling for those children, and it would enable many more parents to educate their children at home (considering they're having to forego working at a job, etc.) Would this be a good idea or no?
Currently, about 3% of school-age children in the USA are being homeschooled - if this was increased to say, 10%, or even 15% - it would certainly take the pressure off overloaded school districts - no need to keep building new school buildings (or those horrible trailers they use around here). It'd be easier to have smaller class sizes with fewer students in the system, and with more parents having the flexibility to homeschool, perhaps many children would be spared bullying (which goes on despite our best attempts to eradicate it) and misdiagnosing of ADHD just because they fidget a bit too much in class.
Am I on the right track here, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
You're committing an accounting faux pas here. When calculating the cost of educating a child in public school, some of the costs are variable, but many of them are fixed. Eliminating one student does not eliminate the fixed costs. Instead, they are simply spread across one fewer student.
A wonderful compromise is a home school based charter school. A charter school is a public school and receives public monies. The money is used for curriculum, supplies, classes, and activity groups. The students have access to such things as science labs, p.e. classes, art classes, music classes, creative writing classes, foreign language classes, etc. The classes are taught by credentialed teachers. The students are free to enroll or not in the classes, as they choose. The "price" for this is becoming accountable to the charter school, including standardized testing and meeting regularly with an education adviser who is a credentialed teacher.
My daughter was a home school student for 3 years. We did one year independently, then two years with a local home school based charter school.
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