MorningStar’s Home Education News

 Homeschooling, Alive and Well in Pennsylvania

By Mimi Rothschild

Anndee Hochman of The Philadelphia Inquirer examines the homeschool boom in Pennsylvania in a recent article.  The Keystone State counted 23,000 homeschool children for the 2004-2005 school year.  Hochman hits the nail on the head when looking into why so many families are choosing to homeschool.

“Between 1999 and 2003, the number of homeschooled students in the U.S. rose from 850,000 to nearly 1.1 million, a 29 percent increase.  Homeschool advocates say it’s easy to figure out why: rising dissatisfaction with public schools; a strong parental distaste for the violence, competition and consumerism of ‘kid culture’; a desire to custom-fit education to a child’s needs and a family’s values.”

I would even go further and say that virtual schools, like The MorningStar Academy, are fueling the homeschool movement and allowing frustrated parents the chance to finally pull their children out of the public school system by providing a solid alternative.

Hochman also goes on to say that “In some ways, homeschooling means freedom for more than one million U.S. children and their families…No carpool schedules to coordinate, no emergency-contact forms to fill out. No bullies, no backpacks, no bus rumbling on the corner at 7:20 a.m.”

The article also looks in great detail at a few homeschooling families in the Philadelphia area.  All the families featured in the article chose to homeschool for the same reasons every homeschooling family does: academics, safety, socialization, religion, and the innumerable benefits of homeschooling.

Read Anndee Hochman’s article about homeschooling here.

  It is awfully telling that homeschooling has entered the mainstream when presidential candidates are forming their own personalized homeschool coalitions.  Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who is running for president in 2008, recently announced “Homeschoolers for Brownback Coalition” (HBC).

It’s not clear what HBC will exactly do, other than associate Brownback with the growing homeschooling movement.  But, one homeschooling parent had this to say about Sam Brownback’s support of homeschooling.

“Sam Brownback understands the unique role that parents play in the lives of their children and he believes that parents should have the freedom to homeschool their children.  For years, Senator Brownback has been a consistent advocate of parent’s rights and expanded access to educational opportunities for home educators.”

While this quote comes for a press release and further more comes from the mouth of a presidential candidate and his team of spin doctors, it is encouraging to see that homeschooling has entered the agenda of presidential candidates.  Ten or fifteen years ago, the idea of homeschooling was never discussed or debated amongst presidential candidates.