Compelling Reasons For Homeschooling

by All Homeschooling

People choose the option of homeschooling their children for a variety of reasons. For many years, homeschooling was the purview of those families who lived in rural areas and found the cost and/or time it would take to transport their children to school unbearable. For these people, homeschooling was and continues to be the only real option when it comes to their children’s education. Many rural families have traditionally relied on their children to help around the house, and thus homeschooling allowed them to pursue their studies around the family schedule, and work and education could be fit into the day according to a suitable timetable. more...

Living on the edge:

by Emma Lee-Potter

For once, the whole of Fleet Street was united. "Meet the Neets," said the Daily Mirror, warning that the 1.1 million young people "Not in Education, Employment or Training" could turn Britain into "a nation of Vicky Pollards". more...

Homeschooling alone

by Greg Beato

IT'S SATURDAY MORNING in downtown Modesto, California, and for a city with 200,000 residents, not much is happening. The streets are mostly empty, and the outdoor tables at Starbucks are unoccupied. Outside the Modesto Convention Center, though, a steady wave of soccer moms (and a smattering of soccer dads) are pushing strollers and lugging plastic shopping bags as they enter and exit the center's 12,000-square-foot exhibition hall. more...

Reading, writing, and landscaping

Some teachers find creative ways to make ends meet

As a nation, we're confused about how we see teachers. Most polls show that respect for the profession has risen in recent years, yet we have certain quietly entrenched ideas--that teaching is easy, that teachers get out at 3 p.m. every day--and these notions, all ludicrous, allow us to accept the injustice in teachers' dismally low salaries. more...

Class dismissed

by David Goodman

BOB ALLNUTT greets me at the door of his geometry class at Hillsboro High School, outside Portland, Oregon. "The key move is the sideways step," he explains, demonstrating how he shimmies between the tightly packed chairs. "I don't get this!" blurts a student from somewhere in the knot of desks. "I'm working my way over there," Allnutt, a 25-year teaching veteran, calls badly as he darts frantically around the class.more...

New vision for Comprehensive Schools

by John Kampfner

The government front bench is dominated by increasingly grumpy men who look older with every passing day. That is why Ruth Kelly is important. It matters that she is 36 and a mother of four, not for conservative-conventional "how-does-she-cope" reasons, but because she has a life. An intriguing life it may be--more of that later--but a life none the less. more...

Leave no school behind

by Mary Lord

Frederick Douglass called it the "pathway from slavery to freedom." W.E.B. DuBois considered it "the most fundamental" of civil rights, while Malcolm X hailed it as "our passport to the future." African-Americans have always understood the importance of education. Yet finding the best learning environment for our children in the current era of school choice has become an increasingly tough--and often frustrating--assignment. more...

Homeschooling Facts

by Greg Beato

How many homeschoolers are there? In 1999 the U.S. Department of Education, via the National Household Education Survey Program, estimated there were 850,000 homeschooled students in the United States. In 2003 it estimated that the number had grown to 1,096,000. more...