More Black Families Home Schooling
There must be a lot of African-American families turning to home schooling, for the Associated Press to notice it (see "More Black Families Home Schooling," by Zinie Chen Sampson, AP, Dec. 11, 2005). Grudgingly admitting that not quite all is well in Public School Land, the AP consults the Home School Legal Defense Assn. (www.hslda.org) and the Black Home Educators Resource Association to find that there are indeed more black families home schooling these days. The AP accepts the old Dept. of Education estimate of 1.1 million children in home schooling--a figure which the HSLDA has maintained is probably only half the real total. (Home schooled children in many districts can still attend public schools for specific courses, sports, or extracurricular activities--and so they get counted as public school students, not home schoolers.) The AP cites black parents' concern for their children's acquisition of basic academic skills (like reading), child safety, and "a wider desire among families of all races to oversee their children's moral upbringing." The reporter then turns to a University of Wisconsin professor who pours cold water on the whole thing by saying that parents who protect their children by home schooling them are making it worse and worse for the children who are left in the public schools. It's so much nicer when we all go down with the ship together, isn't it?
