Why Homeschool?
The first step to homeschooling is making your decision to home educate your child. It is important to become informed and knowledgeable about some of the main concerns you may have. Explore these areas of our website to learn more about the initial decision to homeschool.
Making Your Decision
The reasons people decide to educate their children at home are varied and can be unique to each family. Some look towards a better educational experience, others are concerned with moral and social issues, some are concerned with safety, and still others have special needs that they wish to address. Explore these reasons and others that have led families to homeschooling.
Advantages
Ask anyone who loves homeschooling what the advantages are, and you'll probably hear a long list of the benefits of educating children in the home. Homeschooling is a journey and an adventure, with benefits and rewards for the entire family. Come find out what these advantages are and decide if homeschooling is right for you.
Teaching Your Own
Are you qualified to teach your own children? The answer is yes! It is challenging, but rewarding, to educate your children in your home. Find out what these challenges are and how to address them.
Socialization
"But what about socialization?" So the typical question goes to anyone who homeschools. Find out what socialization means to homeschooling families and strategies to engage your children and your entire family in social activities and connections.
Research & Statistics
Learn about current research and statistics involving homeschooling families, the homeschool movement, and the educational system.
Public School Issues
Many parents are basing part of their decision to homeschool on issues with public schooling, from bullying to poor academic performance to problems with governmental control.
Community Outreach
Want to help homeschooling integrate into the community at large? Are you a homeschool group leader who talks with the media or provides information to new and curious homeschoolers? Here are tips to help you present homeschooling to the public and the media.
What's Popular
Homeschooling Socialization for the Shy Ones
Sometimes, socializing is hard work, especially for those of us who have a shy kid—and if statistics are accurate, nearly half of Americans call themselves “shy.” For those of us homeschooling introverted kids, there is a temptation to just let it go. It would be so much easier to just stay at home, curled up on the couch, than to watch our shy kid suffer or to feel compelled to make apologies for our shy kid. This article offers strategies and ideas about how to have homeschooling success with ...
Socialization is a Bunch of Malarkey
Most folks who ask about socialization mean well. They are not plotting against us, but they are uninformed. But modern socialization in schools is not natural or desired. The best response is one that offers a gentle attempt to enlighten questioners about the wonderful world of homeschooling. 
Homeschooling Growth in the 1980s
Homeschooling was growing rapidly in the 1980s in the United States, after starting from a very small base.
The Homeschooling Image: Public Relations Basics
This free e-book download contains Mary Griffith's work addressing issues concerning the image of homeschoolers as presented by individual homeschoolers and homeschool organizations. It is written for support group leaders and activists in the homeschooling movement who want solid information on dealing with the public. Topics include: Getting Started, Looking Professional, Announcing Yourself, Being Interviewed (with tips for talking with the media, print interviews, broadcast interviews, and t...
Advantages of Homeschooling
A list of the advantages and benefits of homeschooling for children, parents, and families. 
What About Socialization?
Friends or relatives who’ve heard of your homeschooling plans may have already asked, “But what about socialization?” If you’re thinking about homeschooling, you might have even wondered this yourself. This continues to be one of the most commonly asked questions of homeschooling parents, despite decades of academic research and anecdotal evidence showing that homeschooled children are generally significantly better “socialized” than their institutionally-schooled counterparts. Each family will ...
Home Schooling Achievement
Home Schooling Achievement provides a concise look at home school achievement test score data, followed by a more in depth comparison of student's scores with parent education levels, money spent on home school curriculum, government regulation, and race, and gender. In all categories, home school students' successes defy the standard predictors. The final chart examines activities and community involvement and resoundingly explodes the myth that home schooled children lack adequate socializatio...
8 Powerful Reasons Why I Unschool My Kids
Nina Palmo explains the benefits of unschooling by looking at the benefits this model offers. These benefits include better learning, innovative thinking, passion about learning, good preparation for college and the workforce, and even more what the exact point of learning is (hint: it's not just to go to college or enter the workforce). Unschoolers don't have all the answers, but they do dig deep to find the best way to help their children find joy and power in learning. 
Dear Naysayers, Your Socialization Argument Doesn't Hold Water Anymore (And It Never Did)
Socialization is often the first thing that enters into people's minds when they think about homeschooling. Why is that? Well, there are stereotypes that feed into the idea that homeschoolers are shut in and isolated. But the reality of homeschooling today is just the opposite of this. This article breaks down the myths of socialization with reasoned responses. 
1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003
This brief uses data from the 2003 National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) to estimate the number of homeschooled students in the United States in 2003 and to discuss the reasons parents decide to homeschool their children. The brief also shows that the number of homeschoolers, and the proportion of the student population they represent, has increased since 1999.
The Myth of Teacher Qualifications
Most education officials publicly claim that teachers need special “qualifications” in order to be effective. As a result, public education organizations often promote legislation or an interpretation of the law which would require home school parents to have one of three qualifications: 1) a teacher certificate, 2) a college degree, or 3) pass a “teacher’s exam.” Although this seems reasonable on the surface, such requirements not only violate the right of parents to teach their children as gua...
Getting Started in Homeschooling: Deciding to Go For It
How do you decide to homeschool? There are obviously a number of ways to go about this. This series of articles can help you explore whether the idea of homeschooling is right for you and your family.
The Characteristics of Homeschooled and Nonhomeschooled Students
One way to examine how student, family, and household characteristics are related to homeschooling is to compare the characteristics of homeschooled students to different populations of students. This study provides a comparison of homeschoolers to non-homeschoolers, both public schooled students and private schooled students, by student, family, and household characteristics.
Socialization: A Great Reason Not to Go to School
This "Learn in Freedom" article provides research supporting the positive socialization homeschooled children receive. Discusses research supporting the conclusion that homeschooled children have higher levels of self-esteem and communication skills, and fewer behavioral problems, than other children.
Why Unschool?
Unschooling can seem impossible to understand for many people, but in fact, it is well-reasoned, tested, and has been successfully implemented by families around the world. The evidence shows that unschooling leads to life-long learning, happy successful individuals, better family connections, and a true and joyful love of learning. 
Resources
The Exhausted School: Bending the Bars of Traditional Education
These 13 essays, presented at the 1993 National Grassroots Speakout on the Right to School Choice, illustrate how education reform actually works. Written by award-winning teachers and their students, these essays present successful teaching methods that work in both traditional and nontraditional classroom settings. “Gatto’s voice is strong and unique.” — Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul
They're Your Kids: An Inspirational Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate

For many people, their schooling was uncomfortable, tedious, and sometimes a waste of time and energy. This book offers the idea that the public school system is tragically flawed and that we are able to do better for our own children. Sam Sorbo, mom of three and wife of actor Kevin Sorbo, took the leap into homeschooling and found the joy and success she was seeking. Included are strategies for working parents, those who are scared to take the leap, and anyone who wants the best for their children. 

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and the impact of the book, and a new Foreword.
But What About Socialization? Answering the Perpetual Home Schooling Question: A Review of the Literature
This book by Dr. Susan A. McDowell  uses research, statistics, and the experiences of homeschooling families to answer questions and counter myths about homeschooling and socialization. Read through a discussion of the multiple meanings of socialization, what parents, leaders, and children have to say about the issue, and what the research shows. 
A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling
In 1991, shortly after receiving both the New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year Awards, John Gatto resigned to begin a new career as an education reform advocate. In this collection of 16 essays, Gatto analyzes the problems of American education and suggests solutions for revitalizing the system — prescriptions that run counter to current trends.
Homeschool Bravely: How to Squash Doubt, Trust God, and Teach Your Child with Confidence

It's time to change your perspective to transform the way you plan, teach, and homeschool. This book helps you to see homeschooling as a calling. With this mindset, you'll be able to dismiss the stress of impossible expectations. Find strategies to help you juggle the logistics of homeschooling with different ages, be a good support for a struggling learner, set realistic goals, dismiss the guilt, and weather any criticism. You can be a hopeful homeschooler! God uses all for good and can transform all of your stress, fears, shortcomings, and successes to create the best plans for your family. 

Kingdom of Children : Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology)

More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society's most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don't know what home schooling looks like from the inside.

Sociologist Mitchell Stevens goes behind the scenes of the homeschool movement and into the homes and meetings of home schoolers. What he finds are two very different kinds of home education--one rooted in the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and one stemming from the Christian day school movement of the same era. Stevens explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today. In the process, he introduces us to an unlikely mix of parents (including fundamentalist Protestants, pagans, naturalists, and educational radicals) and notes the core values on which they agree: the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of a highly competitive, bureaucratized society.

Kingdom of Children aptly places home schoolers within longer traditions of American social activism. It reveals that home schooling is not a random collection of individuals but an elaborate social movement with its own celebrities, networks, and characteristic lifeways. Stevens shows how home schoolers have built their philosophical and religious convictions into the practical structure of the cause, and documents the political consequences of their success at doing so.

Ultimately, the history of home schooling serves as a parable about the organizational strategies of the progressive left and the religious right since the 1960s.Kingdom of Children shows what happens when progressive ideals meet conventional politics, demonstrates the extraordinary political capacity of conservative Protestantism, and explains the subtle ways in which cultural sensibility shapes social movement outcomes more generally.

The Homeschooling Revolution
A readable, scholarly overview of the modern day homeschooling movement. Includes vignettes from homeschooling families, war stories, research information, media reaction, footnotes, and statistics.
Why We Homeschool

It is a common misconception that most parents homeschool due to bullies, school shootings, or bad teaching content. While these things are important, there is a higher purpose for choosing to home education your children. Even if all those things were corrected, there are stronger reasons to stay committed to the homeschool model. So why do you homeschool? This book looks at the meaning and significance of a true Christian education. 

Taking Charge of Your Child's Education: A Guide to Becoming the Primary Influence in Your Child's Life

Every parent wants to give their child the best start in life. The best way to do that is to get fully involved in their educational process as their primary influence. This book is full of helpful information, resources, and tools that will lead you to home education success. Erica Arndt recognizes that the most important factor is the family unit relationships. This book will help you as you make your decision to homeschool. 

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The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
Opening the door for beginners who seek a thorough grounding in the first arts of human understanding, this book explains the nature of logic, grammar, and rhetoric-the three of the seven liberal arts-and how they relate to one another. In Renaissanc...
Crash-Proof Your Kids: Make Your Teen a Safer, Smarter Driver
Every year, six million sons and daughters will become first-time drivers. Fifty-eight percent of them will be involved in a car accident within a year of getting their license, and a significant portion of these crashes will be fatal. But here's the...
Discover Your Child's Learning Style : Children Learn in Unique Ways - Here's the Key to Every Child's Learning Success
When, where, and how does your child learn best? Because children process information in many different ways, what works for one child might not work for another. This book shows you how to assess and nurture your child's learning style based on his ...
Learning Adventures
Each book in the Learning Adventures series covers skills and concepts for grades 4-8, with a history-based approach. Each contains a year's worth of lesson plans in a daily format. All subjects except math are covered.
100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing The Right Curriculum And Approach For Your Child's Learning Style
The key to successful home education is determining your educational philosophy and linking it to your child’s learning style. Then you can make an informed decision in choosing the right educational curriculum for the child. Homeschool guru Cathy Du...