Conference highlights home-school benefits

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Children home-schooled by devout parents academically outperform their public school peers and reveal better character development, according to home-education leaders who gathered during the weekend.

"The battle for our children's souls is a war," Shelly Hendry of His Image Ministries in Clarksville, Va., said at the Northern Virginia Home Education Conference near Tysons Corner. "We're like those firefighters [on September 11] who walked into those flames to do a rescue."

Home-schooled teenagers nationwide in the 1990s scored on average in the 84th percentile on national standardized academic achievement tests in eighth-grade reading, math, science, social studies, total language and study skills, while public school students on average scored 34 percentage points lower, said J. Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va.

"With these test scores, we've been able to get [statutory] 'no qualification' [requirements] for parents who home-school their children" in Virginia, despite regular licensure requirements for public school teachers, Mr. Smith said at the conference attended by 800 Washington area parents.

"The qualification [for home-school teachers] should be motivation and parent or guardian. ... These test scores show that if parents will get involved with their children educationally, they will advance."

Mr. Smith said he was "tired of the socialization argument" that home-schooled children lack social skills compared with public school children.

"The more time your children can spend with you and other adults, the better socialized they will be," he said. "If they can spend all day with you and their other siblings, life gets pretty simple after that."

The conference included 21 area home-schooling support groups, more than 50 curriculum providers, the Virginia Science Museum at Richmond, and area colleges that simultaneously enroll many home-schooled high school students in undergraduate courses.

"Home-schoolers are very computer literate and high-tech," said Yvonne Bunn, executive director of Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV).

"More than 80 percent have computers and Internet access and they readily take advantage of online learning, CD-ROM classes, virtual classes, and distance-education learning."

Mrs. Bunn said about 20,000 Virginia families now take advantage of the state's permissive home-schooling statute, which allows parents to exempt children from compulsory public school attendance by filing a "notice of intent" as home-schoolers or a religious exemption with the state Department of Education. About 5,000 Virginia families annually file the religious exemption.

She said the home-schooling population grows about 15 percent each year.

"There's more accountability for [home-schooled] high school students than public school students because home-schoolers have to be tested every year," with scores reported to the state Department of Education, Mrs. Bunn said. Public school students are tested only three times in 13 years, in the fourth, eighth and 11th grades.

Mrs. Bunn said HEAV has worked with the Virginia General Assembly and state Department of Education over the years to overcome establishment hostility toward home schooling.

Mr. Smith, citing court decisions that exempt public schools from malpractice suits, said: "The courts have recognized that there is no cause of action if schools fail. ... They say it's your responsibility. So it is our responsibility. We can't shift it to anyone else."

Noting public school officials' emphasis on parental involvement in education, Mr. Smith said, "Government doesn't have to stand over our shoulder to make sure we do something."

Like other speakers at the two-day conference at McLean Bible Church's conference center, Mr. Smith emphasized Christian faith. "We've decided to train them for heaven, not for Harvard," he said.