Thoughts on homeschooling?

[A Theist]

As someone who teaches in a very good public school I am, not surprisingly, a fan. Specifically I can only get excited for the job if I think I have a chance to advocate for, inspire and guide kids whose home environment may not be equipped to do that as well. I like the feeling of being in it together as a community, not just promoting the best interests of me and mine in a dog eat dog world. For that reason I would never teach in a private school or a charter school where skimming allows the better off to hog resources.

I see a lot in what we do which would be hard to duplicate for a single family, but then, I don't deny that a very good one-on-one experience with the right adult which caters only to junior probably does have the capacity to enable him to advance academically more than he might otherwise. The social dimension probably doesn't have to be worse at home, but without making the effort it doesn't seem as rich in possibility. Of course, at some schools that possibility includes gang activity so an ineffective school may be a bigger negative socially than at home. Avoiding a gang infested school would always be a good reason to home school for the qualified, but I would always prefer to bring my advocacy as a parent to a public school that serves the entire community.

People in my family who home school do so to control their kids non-church contacts. I don't think that motivation can ever be a positive for the kid, though the control freak parents obviously like it fine.

Hmmmm...you want to talk skimming? It's maintaining the high costs of teachers unions contracts that's breaking the bank in the school districts. In our particular school district salaries and benefits packages eat up better than 80% of it's expenditures.
Our district's total revenues are are nearly $218,000,000, but the expenditures to maintain teachers union contracts and other staffing is better than $156,000,000. The average annual salary for a teacher in our district is $20,000 higher than the average annual salary of the taxpayer who supports them. Administrators and teachers in the public education sector make a heck of a lot more by way salaries and benefits than those administrators and teachers in private schools and charter schools. The school superintendent in our district has a five year contract that's worth $1,000,000, and the taxpayers in our district has an average salary that is far lower than national median income. One school district in our county, (the largest of our 16 county school districts) got in a bit of hot water this year when it was found that it had falsified student attendance numbers in order to scam the state for school funding money. School boards now use tactics, holding kids hostage, that threaten to eliminate school sports and other extra-curricular activities, including busing, to extort votes in order to pass school tax levies. It's no longer about the kids in public education anymore, it's more about the paycheck and benefits packages.