Home (?) Schooling

In reading about educational options this past year, I've been surprised by how little can be excluded. I thought that "academic rigor" with lots of expensive one-on-one adult attention and lots of carefully graded homework was ideal, for a kid who would do well in college and beyond. I didn't take homeschooling seriously. I still don't, in the sense that I doubt that a large proportion of families can do what I used to think of as homeschooling, but the it seems that the term covers a wide and increasing range of approaches to education. A pediatrician blogged recently on 18 Reasons Why Doctors and Lawyers Homeschool Their Children — ChildrensMD

I timidly attended a home school parent meeting last spring. Surprisingly it was full of doctors, lawyers, former public school teachers, and other professionals. These were not the stay-at-home-moms in long skirts that I expected. The face of homeschooling is changing. We are not all religious extremists or farmers, and our kids are not all overachieving academic nerds without social skills.
An estimated 2.04 million k12 children are home educated in the United States, a 75% increase since 1999....

But that homeschooling need not be entirely at home, so it's not clear what's going on; Wikipedia notes Homeschooling # Homeschool cooperatives

Co-ops also provide social interaction for homeschooled children. They may take lessons together or go on field trips. Some co-ops also offer events such as prom and graduation for homeschoolers.
Homeschoolers are beginning to utilize Web 2.0 as a way to simulate homeschool cooperatives online. With social networks homeschoolers can chat, discuss threads in forums, share information and tips, and even participate in online classes via blackboard systems similar to those used by colleges.... Regarding socialization, Taylor's results would mean that very few home-schooling children are socially deprived. He states that critics who speak out against homeschooling on the basis of social deprivation are actually addressing an area which favors homeschoolers.

It's interesting. Homeschoolers make some major claims:

Created by: CollegeAtHome.com

From my point of view, the important thing is simply that this does not seem to be a disaster: it's a real choice which parents have been increasingly making, where benefits seem, for many, to outweigh any harm, and research suggests that this is just fine. I don't see any reason why the trend should stop; in fact, the costs are going down and the benefits going up as technology improves, so the trend is likely to accelerate.

Or then again, maybe not.