I had lunch with a friend the other day, and it wasn’t long before our conversation drifted to her role as a homeschool mom. In essence, she was frustrated and overwhelmed, convinced that she was doing a terrible job teaching her children, and desperately wondering if she should put them in a traditional classroom.
“Well, I wouldn’t put them in a public school—on an academics basis alone,” I said, working my way through lunch. Being an education researcher has its perks, because when she asked what I meant, I started citing the proficiency statistics for a public school district near her own. “Did you know that only 23 percent of kids in that district can read proficiently?” I asked. “Think your kids can do better than that?”
