In today’s Friday interview, Carolina Journal’s Donna Martinez discusses the explosive growth of home schooling in North Carolina with Davis Carman, the administrative vice president of North Carolinians for Home Education.The interview aired on Carolina Journal Radio (click here to find the station near you).
Martinez: Were you surprised by the growth, surprised at all by these numbers [65,000 North Carolina home schoolers] from the state?
Carman: Certainly we were not surprised to see those kinds of numbers, based on the history of the growth of home schooling. And so we were not shocked. As a matter of fact, the fact that it went over 4 percent of the entire North Carolina population was newsworthy to us.
Martinez: Oh, goodness. So, you are saying that 4 percent of students in North Carolina are now in home schools?
Carman: That is exactly right. This is the first time that it went over the 4 percent number.
Martinez: That is big. Are you expecting more growth?
Carman: Yes, definitely. Just to give you a little bit of history, five years ago, home schoolers only represented 3 percent of the entire state’s student population. Five years before that, it was 2 percent. So, that gives you a sense of [how] home schoolers have doubled their population in the last ten years, whereas the state population of students has been from 1.3 [million] up to about one-and-a-half million students right now.
Martinez: Let’s talk about the reasons why people are turning to home schooling. My sense of it is that, at least a few years ago, this was primarily a religious-based movement, folks who wanted their kids to have religious instruction that they either couldn’t get in a public school, or perhaps the family didn’t have the resources to send the child to a private religious school. But it seems like maybe that has changed. Tell us about that.
Carman: It’s possible that that has changed. Some numbers that we have available that show whether or not a home school has chosen to be specifically a religious school or a nonreligious school, that number from day one has essentially been two-thirds of all home schoolers. Now, that doesn’t necessarily indicate all the reasons they may be home schooling or continue to home school. So, if you look at that number, there hasn’t been any change other than the fact that a large number choose that reason. However, we’ve seen other reports that clearly show that there has been a change as more and more people choose to home school outside of religious populations.
Martinez: And what are the reasons other than religion that folks would turn to this type of education?
Carman: Well, certainly one of the number ones in the past was academic excellence, the desire to train their kids in a way that met their standard of excellence or subject or curricula. Now, interestingly, that has dropped to the number two position in some recent reports. Thirty percent of families choose home schooling for academic excellence reasons, but now 31 percent — making the new number one — is for socialization reasons: negative things happening in the public or private school settings, a lack of the types of pressures that families are nervous about when they see their children being influenced outside of the family. And so then there are also so many avenues that home schoolers can take advantage of, from co-ops to sports programs to speech and debate to, you know, soccer.
Martinez: Or your organization, for example.
Carman: Organizations, and typically the local support groups, give access to individuals of what is going on, what they can participate in outside of the academics that they might be doing at home or elsewhere.
Martinez: You mentioned socialization a moment ago. I’d like to talk a little bit more about that. As I read through some of the material on home schooling and how it has progressed over the years, it seems like a frequent refrain in terms of criticism of the movement is that, well, kids become isolated, that they only have access then to their parents and to their siblings. But that also appears to be changing.
Carman: Well, it does. However, I’ll answer that first by saying, what better place for a child to be surrounded by than his family, his parents who love him and are looking out for his wellbeing? What you see is that the children become good at interacting with young children, children their same age or adults, all the way up to grandparent-age adults. So, they are very good with what I call general communication and polite and good manner skills in those settings. However, there are definitely many settings where home schoolers can get involved with, that take them out of their home and get them together with other home schoolers or other non-home schoolers for extracurricular activities.
Martinez: In fact, you have sports leagues.
Carman: Absolutely, yes. North Carolina had all kinds of sport leagues, locally and statewide. North Carolinians for Home Education, which is the group I represent, has had a basketball league for several years, and they travel to outside of North Carolina to participate in championships.
Martinez: Now, certainly North Carolina is not the only state in which this is a growing movement. And let’s talk a little bit about policy for a moment. I have read about other states, I think California being among the group, that is taking a look at the folks who are leaving their system for home schooling, and they’re trying to find ways to lure those people back. And there are now some, what I would call hybrid programs, developing in which systems are saying, “Okay, you can home school your kids primarily, but if you want to come back and maybe take a class or two in the traditional public school system, we’ll let you do that.” But what I’ve also read is that that’s causing somewhat of a debate within the home school community. I’d like your perspective on that. Should home schoolers remain completely separate from the traditional school system, or do you endorse these hybrid programs?
Carman: Well, there are many different opinions on that from many different home schoolers. Certainly, home schoolers, as a general rule in NCHE, are in support of parent-directed education. We certainly feel that the responsibility of the education falls directly to the parents, not to the state or the federal level. And so from there, you’ll drop down into different opinions based where you fall into the hybrid models. So, you know, rather than state my personal opinion or opinions of others, there’s a wide gamut. And as you say, there’s clearly plenty of conversation going on around there.