More families opting to educate their children at home

In fifth grade, Reid Weaver had trouble staying focused at school. His parents didn’t want him to fall behind in his studies, so they opted for a more comfortable learning atmosphere – home.

The Lake in the Hills family withdrew Reid from school, and his mother, Stacy, dedicated herself to being his teacher.

“He just wasn’t real thrilled with learning, and I think the philosophy is he needs to be excited,” Stacy Weaver said. “We wanted to put the enthusiasm back into it.”

That was five years ago; now the Weavers home-school all four of their children.

They join an estimated 1.5 million students nationwide who were home-schooled in spring 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The number of home-schooled students is rising, the data show. Since 2003, the number of home-schooled students has jumped from an estimated 1.1 million.

An overwhelming majority – 88 percent – of home-school parents surveyed by the Department of Education said they chose to home-school their children because they were concerned about the school environment. Eighty-three percent indicated that they wanted to provide religious or moral instruction, and about 73 percent of parents said they were unhappy with the offerings at other schools.

Beyond the many reasons parents choose home-based education, there also is a wide spectrum of learning philosophies being used, said Kathy Wentz, a local home school adviser.

“A lot of people think home schooling is curriculum in a box. It’s not,” Wentz said. “Very few of us try to do school-at-home.”

School-at-home is the impression that most traditional school students have of home schooling – parents set up a learning area in their home and then teach a set number of subjects each day.

That’s the method that the Weavers used when they started teaching Reid.

“I followed a more structured curriculum, and we were done by 11:30 [a.m.],” Stacy Weaver said. “Without the distractions of the classroom, we could get everything done quickly.”

Now that Reid is 15 and his mom is simultaneously teaching three other children, Reid devises a schedule with her on Mondays and manages his own study time while also taking outside classes that interest him.

“I’m always there to help him, but he is definitely more on his own,” Stacy Weaver said.

Other families take a more liberal approach from the start.

Carla Gibson learned about home schooling when her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, was a baby. Before Elizabeth could even talk, Carla decided that was the education method that her family would pursue.

“I liked being with [the kids], and the thought of sending them off to be with someone else didn’t appeal to me,” said Gibson of Crystal Lake.

Elizabeth Gibson, now 8, is the oldest of three. Her parents adopted the “unschooling” philosophy of home schooling, which bases education on the idea of understanding why something is done, not how.

The Gibson children don’t follow a curriculum or take tests; instead, Carla and her husband look for teaching moments as the children go about their daily lives.

“Instead of me deciding what we’re going to do, we just follow whatever they’re interested in,” Carla Gibson said.

However, Cheryl Metcalf, associate superintendent for Woodstock District 200, said that when home-schooling parents don’t follow curricula that mirror the public schools, students might fall behind their traditional school peers.

“They haven’t been exposed to a lot of the different content, both skill-wise and content-wise,” Metcalf said.

She said she had noticed this to sometimes be the case when students enter the public school system after a period of home-based schooling.

“There are some that would come in very well prepared, and there are some that their preparation is not adequate and it doesn’t meet a standard,” Metcalf said.

Meeting a public or other traditional schools’ standards often isn’t the home-schooling parents’ goal, Gibson said.

“A lot of people still have the belief that [they’re] supposed to let the government educate their kids,” she said.

Metcalf said that it was fine if parents wanted to educate their children, but the public schools should be able to oversee their progress.

“We should have a way to have them enroll [and] monitor the academic success of the student,” Metcalf said. “Register with the regional office, take the same assessments, show proficiency, and have a curriculum that shows they’re reaching proficiency.”

Illinois law doesn’t require parents to notify any official agencies that they will be home-schooling their children.

That’s why any statistics on the number of home-schooled students are estimates, and area districts, such as Woodstock’s, don’t know how many students are being educated outside the traditional school system.

Instead of using curricula from public schools as Metcalf suggests, home-school parents usually network and use one another as teaching resources. They often swap curriculum and books, or borrow them from a home-school resource center at the Johnsburg Public Library.

For now, Stacy Weaver said, her family discusses regularly whether they’ve made the right choice in their children’s education, and think they have so far. She said her children agreed.

“[Reid] was given the option to go to high school, and he chose not,” Weaver said. “My husband and I said when we started, we would always give the children the choice.”