Homeschooling hits record numbers

Didn't homeschool here but started a charter school instead. Some of our neighbors did homeschool and I have mixed feelings about it. Some did very well, some not so well; but of course the same can be said of all of the kids in the area no matter which way they went.

A few things I'll note:

  - educational spending has almost zero correlation with outcomes
  - the number one indicator of educational success is parental involvement
  - homeschooling and charter schools tend to attract the outliers from both ends.  The smart who are underserved where they are and the kids with problems whose parents are involved enough to search for solutions.
  - the real losers are those whose parents can't or won't get involved and who aren't succeeding on their own

In the current educational environment, teachers are often viewed as babysitters whose job is to educate children "correctly" and parents are only there to ensure that "correctly" matches their expectations. In the "good old days" when parents and teachers beat children regularly, at least they were unified in their expectations that children would listen to and obey teachers and not disrupt class. Now it is more common to see underpaid teachers without any support confronted by angry parents when their children misbehave and fail to actually learn.

I am really really skeptical of the first bullet point.

Yeah I think the context matters a lot there. I’m assuming it means “on a state by state basis”, which is true. But within my state, at least, family income, outside spending, and property tax revenues correlate very strongly with outcomes.

I've seen that too, but to my understanding it is less about the money and more about the parent participation. Wealthy school districts don't have any problem with finding volunteers for all sorts of activities, because one of the parents is frequently a stay-at-home parent.