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This is a very good point. I have had the occassional person approach me with an experience of dealing with a poorly homeschooled child (in their opinion, for what that is worth) and they are so against it because of it that they can't see that the majority of children that are homeschooled are receiving an excellent education! My best friend was one of them!

I believe that there are excellent public schools...great and commited to what they do. My local public school is supposedly excellent and is used by realtors in order to get people to buy a house in this school district.

But it is irrelevant to me.

I homeschool because I want to. Because I personally believe that the main part of a my children's life should be under the direct instruction of my husband, or myself. For us, it is purely a personal decision that we are thankful we have the freedom to choose.

Now, after typing all this...I hope I didn't make a typo! LOL

I homeschool because I want to. Because I personally believe that the main part of my children's life should be under the direct instruction of my husband, or myself. For us, it is purely a personal decision that we are thankful we have the freedom to choose.

Well said.

A local homeschool "leader" for lack of a better word refers to many new homeschoolers as Refugees. Refugees are home educating by default because their kids are slow, or unruly, or "diagnosed" with some phantom learning disorder like ADD, ADHD, AHRKEBRTUIENFGPWQND or something else and the parent refuses to addict them to Ritalin. Many refugee home schooled kids were kicked out or encouraged to home school so the public schools didn't have to deal with them.

My sister in law is homeschooling one of their five because she has bad allergies. She's not doing it from the motivation of having a better environment for teaching or a desire to teach her values. As a result, my niece is somewhat mediocre as a student as opposed to her sister who is a "gifted" student and can do no wrong in the lovely public schools. Not to mention the fact that they have used the term "social outcasts" to describe my kids because we homeschool. Evidently, their social outcast is OK.

So, in essence, we will see a slight downward trend in home school academic excellence. However, since many "refugee" parents lack the series motivation necessary, most of these kids will likely end up back in the system anyway.