Tuesday, August 24, 2010

More Texans Opt Out of Public Schools

Over the past five years, the number of Texans opting to home school has grown about 20 percent to an estimated 120,000 families and 300,000 children, according to the Texas Home School Coalition.

-- From "Back to school without leaving the house" by Ericka Mellon, Houston Chronicle 8/22/10

“The economy does have an impact on folks,” said Tim Lambert, president of the coalition. “We saw families last year who had their kids in a private school, times were tough and they couldn’t afford to do that anymore, but they didn’t want to put them in a public school.”

The most recent survey of parents by the National Center for Education Statistics found that families primarily opted to home school because they wanted to provide religious or moral lessons to their children. Other top reasons include parental concerns about safety, peer pressure and the academic instruction at traditional schools.

Parents in Texas are not required to register with any agency or to get their curriculum approved. Legal rulings have upheld that parents simply are supposed to have a curriculum that teaches reading, spelling, grammar, math and good citizenship.

To read the entire article, CLICK HERE.