With more and more families opting out of sending their children to traditional public or private schools, homeschooling is moving further into the educational mainstream every day.
Some parents who were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to teach their children at home discovered they liked the method and continued homeschooling even after schools reopened.
According to numerous sources, homeschooling has been on the rise across the country over the past decade but increased significantly following the pandemic.
However, determining exactly how many children in Jefferson County are being homeschooled is difficult, if not impossible.
“That number simply is not available,” said Kim Quon, regional director of Families for Home Education (FHE), one of Missouri’s largest homeschool organizations.
“The state does not require you to register (as a homeschool provider). Based on what we know, I will say that since COVID we went from about 5 percent to now around 11 percent, but again, that’s strictly an estimate.”
Clint Freeman, superintendent in the Dunklin R-5 School District and head of the Jefferson County superintendents organization, said the county has seen “a definite increase” in the number of families opting to homeschool in the last few years. But he said that trend may be slowing.
“We are starting to see parents coming back to public school,” he said. “The part that’s frustrating is when they’ve been homeschooled and it doesn’t work out for whatever reason. They show up at our door and there’s no documentation about where they are in terms of grade level or their needs.”
He said better oversight and documentation, including assessments such as the MAP test and other benchmarks, would make it easier for homeschool families and schools to work together.
Why do it?
Traditionally, the homeschool community largely has been made up of families who do so for religious reasons, but that is changing, Quon said.
“Ten years ago, it was still predominantly a Christian thing. But now we have some huge secular groups who either don’t affiliate with any religion or they don’t want their curriculum to be driven by (religion),” she said. “There’s been astronomical growth in the past five to 10 years in the market for secular curriculum.”
So what are some of the other reasons families homeschool now?
■ Dissatisfaction with public or private school curriculum.
Former Fox C-6 teacher Mollie Reeder, 38, of Hillsboro has homeschooled her four children for the past 11 years. She and her family are members of the Festus Community of Classical Conversations homeschool group. Its K-12 curriculum includes oral presentations, science experiments, fine arts projects, essay writing, math games and student-led discussions and debates.
“It involves a lot of memorization and facts at first, then expounding on those facts with critical thinking,” Reeder said.
■ The opportunity to tailor learning to the student’s interests and abilities.
“In many families, the schedule is school, homework, supper, more homework, bed,” Quon said. “When do kids get to explore their passion?”
She said giving her children free time to explore what they’re interested in resulted in better focus.
“We picked up on their passions very young, and that’s their careers today,” she said. “That doesn’t always happen, but it did with us. One was a history buff, and he works in museums. The other one was always about oceans and animals, and she works at the St. Louis Aquarium as an educator.”
Quon said her organization, like many others, advises parents to tailor their teaching style to the child.
“I tell families: Teach to what they will need,” she said. “You won’t teach the same way to a child headed for college as you would to one headed for trade school or one with an intellectual disability. You build on the kids’ strengths, help with their weaknesses, in very specific ways. You will never teach a child everything they need to know; that’s impossible. But teach them to learn, to enjoy learning, and the world is open to them.”
■ Scheduling.
“You need to figure out what’s best for your family and what method is best for your situation,” Reeder said. “Maybe it’s about family structure; dad travels for work and you want to go along. Maybe both parents work and you want to do school in the evenings. Maybe you want to do year-round school instead of only nine months.”
Liz and Bill Steffen of rural Festus struggled with traditional schooling in their son’s early years.
“Cody was having a hard time in kindergarten and first grade, and we were miserable in the evenings, fighting over homework,” Liz said. “He’d be in tears, and it was totally ruining family life. So we started homeschooling. He had the same problems with not wanting to do some of the work, but at least we had our evenings free.”
Steffen, 44, who holds a master’s degree in nursing education and teaches in the Area Technical School (ATS) program at Jefferson College, said her family holds traditional Christian values, but that wasn’t the main reason they chose homeschooling.
“I think parents teach the values no matter where the kids go to school,” she said. “This has ended up being a lifestyle that worked for us. The longer we did it, the better it seemed to fit.”
The couple’s younger son, Jake, has never set foot in a conventional classroom.
■ Special needs.
Many children with special needs have a full slate of physical and occupational therapies as well as special dietary needs, which some say are more easily managed with homeschooling.
Organizations like the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) provide legal counseling and other help for parents.
“The HSLDA has teams of people who work with special needs,” Quon said. “Even if you never need them from a legal standpoint, they have a lot of great resources.”
Navigating the rules
There are no federal homeschool regulations; each state develops its own set of rules.
“It ranges from ‘you don’t have to do anything’ in some states to the East Coast where it’s extremely strict,” Quon said. “All states have different rules. Here, the state department of education has to approve your program.”
Homeschool families are required to keep curriculum records and provide test data.
“But they don’t check up on you, make you do constant reports like some other states,” Steffen said.
School districts can range from sympathetic to obstructive.
“Hillsboro was supportive when we took Cody out,” Steffen said. “They never made me feel bad. He did ATS at Jeffco as a sophomore, and I had to re-enroll him (at Hillsboro) to do that. The counselor worked with us to get that done.”
Sometimes homeschooled students head for public or private school in order to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities, but that has its pitfalls, Quon said.
“MSHSAA oversees all competitions, and sometimes their rules are problematic for homeschoolers,” she said. “They require two ‘seated’ classes for a student to have (sports) eligibility, so some kids go to school part-time in order to be eligible for a team. But most schools won’t allow a hybrid situation.
“Bigger communities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, have a lot of clubs and co-ops for homeschoolers. But away from those areas, it’s hard to get enough kids to make a team.”
A pair of bills, SB 411 and SB 230, which currently are making their way through the state Senate, seek to relax some of the regulations that make it difficult for homeschoolers to participate in extracurricular activities.
Freeman said in the Dunklin district, his administration works closely with homeschool families to ensure students’ needs are met.
“We have several homeschool kids who come for the gifted program, or they get special needs services from us,” he said. “As far as things like band or sports, we allow them to take the classes here they need in order to participate.”
Pros and cons
One of the biggest misconceptions about homeschooling, proponents say, deals with socialization.
“People believe that by being with a bunch of kids their own age, their children will learn social skills,” Quon said. “Public school teachers are awesome and they do the best they can. But think about it: When in life will you ever be with an exclusive age cohort? Homeschool kids have tons of opportunities to get out there with other kids of different ages to socialize, take classes, visit museums and parks and libraries and learning centers.
“The old perception of a kitchen table classroom with the blinds closed no longer exists. We’re out there doing service projects and lots more.”
Homeschooling can be time-consuming.
“It’s a lot of work for me,” Steffen said. “I’m lucky that I can schedule school and my job around one another. It’s worth it, of course.”
It can also be expensive. Besides the cost of the curriculum, there are fees for co-ops, class fees, extra supplies for the home, computer and internet access and transportation to events.
It can also be tough to maintain the line between parent and teacher, homeschoolers say.
Freeman said homeschooled students may have limited opportunities to build strong relationships with teachers, coaches, band directors and the like.
On a positive note, proponents of homeschooling say it can be the perfect fit for families with varying needs.
“My boys have had access to their grandparents they might not otherwise have had,” Steffen said. “Cody took a welding class from my father-in-law, a hands-on class. He learned it, got the credit, but then got to have that one-on-one time with his grandfather.”
As it evolves, homeschooling is emerging as something far different than it once was, Quon said.
“Back in the day, the sheriff or child services could show up at the door any time and cite you for truancy,” she said. “So of course people kind of kept it quiet. It was a scary time.
“But as things opened up, as people started to understand, it became more visible. At FHE we have more than 50 organizations come to our resource fair. We didn’t have those opportunities back then because none of these organizations thought about us as another whole dynamic. Now they do.”
Freeman emphasized that bottom line is putting the students’ needs first.
“Family and community support is crucial to make kids successful, no matter how they are educated,” he said.
Homeschool enthusiasts don’t think it’s the perfect solution, just a workable one for their particular circumstances.
“If people tell you it’s a blissful, perfect thing, they are simply lying,” Steffen said with a laugh. “It’s ‘a’ way to do it, not the only way. I don’t think there’s a perfect way to educate your kids; there’s just the way that works. We always wanted to be the primary influence in their lives, and this lets us do that.”