Homeschool Essay

Owning a home is something many people yearn for. According to the racial wealth gap by Janelle Jones “Overall housing equity makes up about two-thirds of all wealth for a typical household”. Many blacks would like to own a home but either are discriminated against in the housing market or cannot afford it. According to the Chicago Tribune, in 2016 only 42.2 percent of blacks owned a home while 71.9 percent of whites owned a home. Less than half of black people own a home. This then leads to education, African Americans not being able to own a home and live in metropolitan areas leads to a low education rate. According to the HuffPost “Children that grow up in poor neighborhoods have a significantly reduced chance of graduating high school. This is a significant quote, I have seen from personal experience coming from a public school, in a metropolitan area that many minorities drop out. This is still an ongoing problem today in Milwaukee. A significant part of blacks going to public schools, with low education rates is because of racial segregation.

There is also an underlying punishment in the segregation found in education. Schools that black children attend are segregated because they are located in poor neighborhoods. Living in high-poverty neighborhoods for multiple generations adds a barrier to accessing achievement. It is not possible to desegregate schools without desegregating both low-income and high-income neighborhoods. Residential segregation and ongoing poverty have left African Americans in some of the most terrible housing in several of the lowest-resourced communities (Rothstein). Black citizens also suffer from concentrated poverty. About 45 percent of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. Only 12 percent of poor white children live in concentrated poverty (Algeron). Children in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty experience more social and behavioral problems, have lower test scores, and are more likely to drop out of school. Part of the difference in educational outcomes likely comes from the different environments black and white children live in during their school years. Black children are far more likely to live in households that are low-income, extremely poor, food-insecure, or receiving long-term welfare support (Ford). Black children are less likely than white children are to live in households where at least one parent has secure employment. In addition, black children have the greatest

Public schooling in the United States fails in providing a quality education for student in K-12. In 2015 the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures reading ability and math and science literacy among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries, found that the United States is ranked 35th in math and 27th in science Desilver, D. (2016). The number one thing every parent wants for their children is for them to have access to the best possible education available. As a result of a low quality public education, parents are progressively looking for alternative ways of schooling. In particular, some parents have decided that homeschooling would better prepare their children in life. This paper will analyze both the pros and cons of homeschooling.

Education in our society is a very important factor in shaping our future. One’s future is depended on the education they receive and everyone is somehow affected by this. Children from the ages of kindergarteners to seniors in high school, college graduates, and stay at home mothers, are all shaped by the education the government provides us. There are many different ways to acquire an education some through private schools, public, charter, and being homeschooled. However, homeschooling is growing more in popularity than it has ever been.

While the American public school system educates the majority of students today, a fast growing population is beginning to accept homeschooling as an adequate alternative. Anyone with kids desires only the best education and experiences for them. Those who face this decision have to take in the plentiful list of differences and decide which will suit their family best. For years, most people saw homeschooling as an ineffiecent replacement to the government-provided schools already in existence. However, in the last ten years, studies have proved that homeschooling well equipps a student for college and beyond, changing the minds of many(http://www.usnews.com/education/high-schools/articles/2012/06/01/home-schooled-teens-ripe-for-college?page=2). In order to make this crutial decision between public or home school, one must account for the social and extracurricular opportunites, the educational aspect, and what role the family plays in education.

Homeschooling, and its rise in the past decade, is a hot topic of discussion in American society. “About 1.35 million children in the country are being officially homeschooled, making it a vital and expanding form of private education and political force in U.S. society” (Cooper & Sureau, 2007). The homeschool movement is growing rapidly because parents are researching their local educational systems and finding that it lacks in the fundamental standards and values they want to instill in their children. “It is odd that homeschooling, perhaps the ultimate form of privatization and withdrawal from, if not rejection of, the public education system, has now reached a level of unprecedented visibility, politicization, and publicization” (Cooper

Home schooling children seems to be taking the place of the traditional classroom, and for many reasons. Statistically, there are about 2.78% of children in the United States being home schooled. California having the highest rates at 193,144 in the year of 2015, and Connecticut having the lowest rates at 1,792. (Zeise 1) Children seem to enjoy the aspect of staying at home while getting their education, but are they seeing the big picture? Three major developments that cause a parent to home school their child could be nonprofessional educators, educational purposes, and bullying.

Home schooling is an alternative to public education. It is a choice that many more parents are making today, and even more are projected to make by the year 2000. It is estimated that at the end of the year 2000 there will be 2,000,000 home schoolers in the United States (Gorder 1996). There are other alternatives to Public School education. Some examples are Catholic or Private schools or a privately hired tutor. There are many reasons why people home school their children. Religious beliefs, academic achievement, social development, moral and psychological reasons are all cited (Wade 1996). However, religious beliefs are often the main reason (Gorder 1996). Some parents feel as if their children are not learning

Homeschooling is becoming a fast growing educational trend in today’s society. “The National Center for Education Statistics estimated that 1.1 million students received their schooling from home in the United States in 2003. This number represents approximately 2.2% of the entire student body in America. By contrast, only 15,000 students received home education 20 years ago.” (Jr., Ronald Kreager) Parents have not always had a constitutional right to homeschool their children. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that homeschooling was legal. Even then there was a lot of consiversiry over the laws homeschoolers and their parents should have to abide by.

Surprisingly, there are a variety of people that do homeschooling. Both people from high-income to low-income families. There are parents that even have doctorates or even a diploma in a general subject. Families with either one or two parents and differing ethnics and religious or secular inducement choose to homeschool (Ray 2002). Researchers come to the conclusion that homeschoolers, for the most part, have free reign when it comes to their homework and school pace that they feel that suits them the best.

Historically homeschool as been around for a while but, “Since the 1980s, the US has experienced an increase in the number of homeschooling families. It is estimated that the number of homeschooled children has grown 15–20% annually (Bauman, 2001) and now totals about two million students (Murphy, 2012)”

Education is amongst the essential things to pursue in life. It is the most powerful tool to particularly have in this day of age. For hundreds of years, parents have been accustomed to specifically send their children to schools substantially controlled by the government or privately. However, some parents mainly choose to homeschool their children for various of reasons, which raises the question is homeschooling reliable? Homeschooling is an educational alternative that enables guardians to educate their kids at home as opposed to sending them to school. However, homeschooling wasn’t always legal. In fact, it was not until 1993 that homeschooling was legal in all 50 states. Since then the number of parents truly choosing to homeschool their children have significantly increased fairly contrary to popular belief. Homeschooling laws differ from state to state which has brought numerous of controversies in the past two decades. Some view it as a reliable way of learning, others view as a waste of time. The topic of homeschooling as an alternative route to education is a social issue that impacts America because of the advantages and the disadvantages that evolves around it.

Old Schoolhouse Magazine states that the average home schooler's SAT score is 1100, 80 points higher than the average score for the rest of the population. This kind of increase over the population should raise some eyebrows and have people questioning, what are home schoolers doing that my child isn’t doing or what is a home schooled child being taught that my child is not being taught. The boost in academic excellence over the rest of the population may explain the recent statistics given by the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau estimates that some 30 million children could eventually stay home to learn. Why is it that the popularity of home schooling is increasing at such a rapid rate? What are the key benefits of home schooling your child?

“As more of America's educational resources move online, onto video, and onto disks, it becomes easier and easier to duplicate, and surpass, a classroom education...Home schooling is now clearly more sophisticated than classroom education. We have more (and better) resources to draw upon. We can adapt the latest technology more quickly” (Price, 1994). Home schooling in itself provides an alternate, yet effective means of learning. Technology acts as an effective means of enhancing home schooling, through which instructors and students make use of online resources and emerging technologies to support their educational curriculum.

Home schooling is an important issue in the educational world today. Whether or not a parent has the right to take their child out of public schools to educate them at home has become a widely talked about subject. Over the past decade, some 18,260 home schools have registered as home schools, and this number continues to grow (Clark/Havice). This issue, although intense and multi-layered, is often divided into two distinct groups-those who oppose it, thinking it prevents the child from learning the essentials for social life, and those who advocate it, thinking that it brings the family together, allowing the parents to control what the child learns, and permits them to educate the children one