Number of home-schooled children rises

MAT-SU -- At a time when public schools across the state are scrambling to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, an increasing number of Alaskans are choosing to home school their children or enroll them in public correspondence programs.

According to a report released Aug. 2 by the National Center for Education Statistics, the estimated number of home-school students has increased 29 percent since 1999 and now sits at nearly 1.1 million nationwide.

The report cited several reasons for the increase and included surveys that indicate some parents are concerned over the safety and environment of public schools, while others have a desire to include religious or moral lessons.

Alaska law provides broad freedoms for parents who wish to privately home school their children. A law passed in 1997 codified existing home-school practices across the state, enabling parents to home school their children with virtually no strings attached. Parents can set up a private home school for their children without registering with a school district, acquiring teacher certification or administering statewide assessment tests.

But despite these broad freedoms for private home schoolers, in recent years many Alaskans have opted to enroll their children in public correspondence programs, which give parents the option of directing education at home while receiving a stipend for curriculum materials.

Publicly funded correspondence programs have been gaining popularity throughout the state for five or six years.

The Mat-Su Borough School District's Track 2 Homeschool Support Program is going into its third year with a projected enrollment of 800, compared to 600 last year and 350 the year before.

According to Heritage Foundation research, these kinds of correspondence programs are offered by approximately 20 percent of Alaska's school districts and serve nearly 10,000 home-school students statewide.

Kim Floyd, public information specialist for the Mat-Su Borough School District, said Track 2 has been gaining popularity with parents and students because it offers higher curriculum allotments than many of its competitors -- $2,000 per student -- and includes the option to enroll in music programs and participate in extracurricular activities at public schools across the Valley.

There are approximately 1,700 students in the Mat-Su Borough enrolled in various public correspondence programs offered by school districts statewide, Floyd said.

But public correspondence programs come with rules and restrictions private home schoolers do not have. In 2002 the state began requiring public correspondence students to take the statewide assessment test and have it monitored and graded by a state-certified teacher. The law also prohibited state funds from being used to purchase religious teaching materials for students in these programs.

Mary Trimble, an educational assessment specialist and former president of the Eagle River/Chugiak Home Schoolers Association, said public correspondence programs have supplanted private home schooling in Southcentral Alaska in recent years.

"A lot of people signed onto the idea of publicly funded correspondence just a few months after Alaska got the best home-school law in the nation," Trimble said. "But private home schooling is still on the rise, to a small degree because these programs bring the option of home schooling to the attention of private- and public-school parents. Once they try it they find that the tutorial method of home schooling gives their child the best opportunity to learn. This has been confirmed in the assessments that I do."