We’re thinking of switching to home schooling for our 3 kids.
I’ll be very grateful for any war stories, as well as pointers to net resources.
Home schooling can and does work, if the parents are able to plan way into the future and make friends in the local school district office. There will be a lot of paperwork and you will want to make sure, on a regular basis, that your childrens’ acheivement is ahead of that of a student of similar age in the public schools.
Make contact with colleges and universities by the time your child is 13 (or at the beginning of what would be 9th grade in an American high school) and find out what the process is for home schooled applicants.
After the age of 13, you are committed for the long haul. If you decide to put them in a regular high school any time after this point, they will be credit deficient, and have a hell of a time completing the requirements for graduation.
There are several home schooling groups in the United States. You need to choose one the same way you’d choose a private school. You will not be able to successfully home school your children without the help of one of these groops.
Here’s a useful page: http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/
I’m a teacher in a (public) high school program designed for credit deficient students. I’ve seen what happens to students who’s parents give up on home schooling in the middle of high school. It isn’t fun to tell a “straight A” student that they won’t be able to graduate until they’re 19 or 20. Long term commitment to home schooling is essential. If you have any doubts, don’t try it.
I have seen it work, for people with the ability and dedication to pull it off.
A few of my favorite students (at the small college I taught at) were home-schooled. A few of my friends have also gone that route. One family decided to home-school through eighth grade, then let the kids go to the public high school.
A recurring theme (at least in my small sample) seems to be the problems of teaching high-school math and science. Most parents aren’t up to teaching math or science at that level, and even if there are a cluster of families helping each other out, there may be no one in the group with the skills to teach one or another of the sciences at that level.
I’m not too concerned about math and science - both my wife and I have math Ph.D.'s and I’ve tried explaining simple things to the kids and they understand it (unlike their public school teachers 
) I’m more concerned about writing. If we go this route, we’ll probably have to pay a tutor to grade their essays.
Thanks
My sister was home-schooled for 11th and 12th grades; went on to get a Master’s in English and a minor in Spanish which she used to teach public high school until the kids started coming.
My half-brother was home schooled early (up to 7th grade, I think. He turned out to be one of those kids you pray you don’t have to try to handle. Expulsions, pot-head, the wrong crowd and all that.
Personally, I would never send a child to a public school. I’ve seen and heard too many horror stories. I even started a thread on this topic months ago. IMO, private or home school is the way to go.
You sound like the type of family that could pull it off. You don’t seem like the type who would start something this important on a lark and then not put the requisite effort into it. I say good luck to you!
I wonder if getting the appropriate credits in high school varies fromn state to state or something like that. I have a friend who home-schooled her children all the way through because her husband was in the Air Force, stationed in California, and she said the schools out there were horrible. Toward the end of his time in the service he was sent to Arizona and their two oldest enrolled in the public high school. The girl graduated on time, valedictorian, and the boy then came to this area and finished here. (They moved back here at the end of the dad’s enlistment to be near family.) Neither of them had any trouble with transfering to public school in the middle of their high school years. I don’t know what the boy is doing now, in terms of college, but the girl started two years ago, with enough scholarship money to pay for everything but part of her housing.
The younger sister is being home-schooled now, but I don’t know what she will do for high school.
I’m not terribly knowledgable about the whole home-schooling thing, but I do know that it’s terribly difficult. I know a group of people who all home-school their kids, and to tell you the truth, most of their kids are way behind what they should be. There was an eleven year old who couldn’t read yet! His parents brushed it off with “he’ll learn to read when he’s ready to learn.” I personally think this is child abuse.
However, just because this group of parents were incredibly lax with the home schooling thing doesn’t mean all parents are. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into.
I was homeschooled from grades 7-9. After that I began attending a local community college, and am now (as may be noted by the username) a student at the University of Texas. A sophomore (lack like 3 credits to be a junior) at 18, no less. Homeschooling CAN work, but the parents MUST be disciplined. While my case is by no means typical, I have seen cases like the one that Athena mentioned (though not to that severity), and while they do happen, they aren’t typical either. I took courses from a ::gasp:: Fundamentalist Christian homeschool comapny that produced the curriculum and optional videos of actual classrooms where the curriculum was used. The videos were very helpful because they’re from a REAL classroom with a REAL teacher and a REAL class. I will email it to you (as well as some other names of publishers) if you wish, but be warned: unless you’re Fundamentalist, you probably won’t like it.
“I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
-T.S. Eliot
The it in the previous sentence being the address of the publishing comapny. SHEESH, you’d think I would proofread after I’ve changed a lot of stuff.
This is merely a personal observation and in no way intended to be a flame or troll…but…the people that I’ve met that were being homeschooled were geeks…
…course they probably turned out to found major corporations or attain high public office…but nonetheless, the seemed like social geeks at the time…
Krispy Original – voted SDMB’s 19th most popular poster (1999)
Ummmmm…I am going to make a vote for the unpopular. I was educated in a public high school and it did me no end of good. When I was going into high school my mom looked all over to find a good school, but somehow I ended up in the high school that is the most “ghetto” in the area. Imagine, I went to school with people that wern’t upper-middle class whites! And I can actually deal with diversity now. There was very little racial or class conflict at my high school because the people that went to my school grew up in a diverse place and were used to being friends with and living around people of different races and classes since kindergarden. There wasn’t even the traditional “popularity” strife because people were used to people different than themseves. So, the people in black trenchcoachs with blue hair wern’t harrassed. And if you couldn’t afford a car, who cares? Everyone just did their own thing and let everyone else do their thing. No Columbine shootings here. I think that that evironment has better prepared me for life than most of the (white, middle class, privately educated) people that I now go to college with. I am glad I was educated in the ghetto. Combined with the efforts of my ever-supportive family and the truely devoted teachers I had, my public high school experience was one I wouln’t trade for anything. Sheltering people puts them behind in the long run, as I am now seeing in college. The real world comes knocking on everyone’s door soon enough.
Athena wrote:
Nonsense.
It’s child neglect.
Big difference, you know.
Sven: I have no doubt that public schooling is good. I wanted very much to go to a normal high school and be, well, normal. But I played the cards I was dealt, and I have no doubt that I am in a better situation than if I had gone to a public high school. I think it really depends on the person. I mean, an overly social person is just not going to like the environment of being at home. That’s why it’s important to be involved in activities outside of school (as I was). And the reason I’m not doing as well as I would have liked to is not because I’m afraid of diversity, but it stems from playing countless hours of Half Life and Quake 3.
Krispy: There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m a social geek. I’m a Computer Science major, for Chrissake. 
“I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
-T.S. Eliot
If a parent is going to home-school, I think that they need to make sure that their child/children have some ways of making social contacts. I personally am opposed to using the local school’s resources for this–home schooling draws money out of the school district. If the child then participates in extra-curiculars, they are a drag on the budget.
I guess the big question on home-schooling is why? In the case of the OP, it sounds like they might be able to start their own charter school and help additional learners.
(I won’t go into the thread of how American public schools would be a lot better off if school boards would vanish…)
Bucky