I am home-schooling two kids while I write and market a book. One of whom is old enough to have taken standardized tests, FReeper NattieShea, age 8. Her Stanford Achievement test scores last year indicated that she is a perfectly normal 10th grader. She scored Post High School in mathematics and algebra :-). She is completing a self-taught course in high school geometry now and will begin trigonometry, analytic geometry, and calculus this summer! THIS is an example of her literary work at that time. Her current term paper analyzes five works by Dickens for how his perspective of the Industrial Revolution was biased by his childhood experience.
Her sister is now barely 8. She is completing her work in fractions and can multiply binomials in her head. Her term paper is on five books by Jules Verne. She is the athlete, NattieShea is the dancer.
Here is the really damning piece of information insofar as public schools are concerned:
I spend less time teaching these kids than it would take me to drive them to school and back plus help them with their homework. I have no doubt that, if they were in pubelick schools I would spend MORE time dealing with the behavioral problems arising therefrom than I do now while achieving excellent results and producing kids that are a pleasure to have. Parents beg us to loan them out hoping that they might be a positive influence on their kids. Home schooling is the best thing ever to happen in our family. It has brought us together like nothing else ever could have done.