HOPE, Maine — Kathy and Ed Green tried to enroll their oldest daughter in kindergarten in 1981, but back then, the town of Hope didn’t have a kindergarten. The closest school that did was far away, so the couple decided to give home schooling a try.
Thirty years ago the Greens were one of only 10 families registered as home-schoolers with the Maine Department of Education. From the early 1990s to 2005, the number of registered home-schooled children steadily rose by 200 to 300 each year. Since 2005, the total has remained fairly steady, fluctuating between 4,700 and nearly 5,000 home-schooled children.
There are no documented reasons so many parents have chosen to home-school their kids, or why that method of education grew so rapidly before plateauing at its current level. It could be because of the advent of the Internet and the increased availability of home-school lesson plans, educators say. Or it might be because as home schooling has become more popular, it seems less strange.
“Learning is just a way of life for them. It’s ongoing, every day,” Kathy Green said. That includes during the summer months when public school students are enjoying vacation.
“Children don’t stop learning, so you don’t stop teaching, basically,” she said.
Taking a break from home schooling is like taking a break from eating, added her husband.
“It’s just how you live. We don’t think of it as school — it’s just part of the day. And the kids like it because they can ask ‘Why is the sky blue?’ and they know we’ll take the time to explain or help them find out,” Ed Green said as several of his grandchildren in bathing suits played and hollered in his yard. One youngster held a baby goat.
The Greens founded Homeschoolers of Maine, a volunteer-run nonprofit organization to help other parents with home schooling. The organization helps assess students, host conferences and put together home-schooling newsletters. They also help the growing number of people interested in trying home schooling.
With the children’s education continuing through the summer, there are no lapses in learning, the Greens point out, and learning isn’t boring.
For instance, Ed Green said, his grandchildren recently saw some chipmunks and got curious. When the children asked how chipmunks lived, Ed Green handed them a nature book. The children then wrote up a report on chipmunks.
“Did you know they can burrow holes up to 12 feet long? I didn’t know that,” he said.
Matthew Hunt probably did. His home schooling is based largely in the woods near his home. Matthew, 11, lives up the road from the Greens, on the outskirts of Camden. While he uses textbooks for his math and reading classes, usually his learning is driven by his curiosity. And his curiosity seems to focus on nature, according to his mom.
“At the end of a hard day Matthew will ask, ‘Would that have been schoolwork?’” said his mom, Raylene Hunt.
Hunt started home schooling 11 years ago when her other child, Helen, was 8. Her family was going through a transition and they had moved several times. Rather than bouncing Helen through at least four school districts that year, she decided to try home schooling. After all, she has a degree in early childhood education and already had worked as a teacher.
“We thought it would give our lives some stability,” Raylene Hunt said as she sat on her porch recently, several small children running around her. Hunt now runs a day care from her home while she teaches son Matthew and helps Helen, now 19, prepare for college.
“I liked it so much with Helen, I decided I should keep doing it,” she said.
Helen liked it too, although she said it was a tough transition because she had been through a few years of public school by the time she started home schooling. The 8-year-old liked the idea of sitting still and having structured lesson plans every day. So that’s what she and her mom did. As in public school, they set goals, read chapters from textbooks and answered quiz questions at the end of chapters.
Since then, textbook and lesson plan companies have reduced their prices and the books are more available. For Hunt, the Internet has helped her teach Matthew. Her older daughter might have had to wait for a book from the library to answer research questions. Matthew can Google it.
It’s unclear how many home-schoolers like Matthew work through the summer. Maine’s Department of Education doesn’t keep records on that. In fact, the department keeps few records on home-schoolers — just who is being taught, the child’s age and a file of yearly assessments.
For her own record keeping with the state, Hunt keeps a tally of the days she works with her son. She’s required to teach him for 175 days. They probably do more like 350, Hunt said.
The 175-day requirement is one of very few by statute in Maine. To home-school, a parent must notify the state, teach the child for at least 175 days a year, teach the child the basic classes (English, math, science, social studies, physical education, health, library skills, fine arts, Maine studies and computer skills) and assess the child annually. The parents can show the Department of Education that they have assessed their child by presenting a standardized test, a project, or a review by a local governing board or certified teacher.
The mandatory yearly assessment is submitted to the state, but the children do not have to show annual progress or prove they are learning at a certain level. Hypothetically, the child could be “failing” by public school standards, according to David Connerty-Marin, who works for the Maine Department of Education.
Home schooling was more regulated in the past and more documentation was required, but parents complained that the process was cumbersome and unnecessary. So in 2003, state legislators changed the Maine statutes to simplify the process to only a few reporting requirements.
“We don’t have someone over the microscope dissecting their work. The state acknowledges and respects the parents’ right to school their children,” said the Department of Education’s Edwin “Buzz” Kastuck.
Hunt doesn’t worry much about the exact tracking of every skill Matthew picks up. As long as he’s making progress, she’s happy. She doesn’t worry about him knowing everything that will be on the SAT if he ever wants to take it.
“I’m more concerned that they can add, subtract, multiply, divide and balance a checkbook than that they know geometry or algebra. Once you know how to learn, you can learn anything,” she said.
To make sure she and Matthew are on track, she meets with a group of eight home-schooling families. The group, which is organized as a nonapproved private school, has one leader who monitors all of the children to make sure they’re learning.
There, Matthew gets to socialize with other children. He also plays with the other children in his neighborhood after public school gets out. Matthew has gone to summer camps and is part of a church, so his mom doesn’t worry about his socialization. According to educators, many home-schoolers take advantage of community programs that keep them in contact with their peers.
Weighing the value of a home education against a public school education is difficult since there is little comparable data.
“Some go to college, some go into the military, some go to work after they’re done,” Kastuck said based on anecdotal information he has heard in his years in the department.
According to the University of Maine’s admissions director, Sharon Oliver, many of Maine’s home-schoolers who apply to the university are well-rounded and well-prepared.
Oliver looks for a few things from home-schooled college applicants. They must take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the most widely used college admission exam in the U.S. They also either must provide a transcript with course descriptions and grades or they must take a General Educational Development exam to show they’ve earned the equivalent of a high school diploma.
“A lot of times home-schoolers are very well-prepared for college. You see the whole gamut, just like you do for public schools, but most home-school curricula are thorough and [the students] take advantage of things around them, like community college,” Oliver said.
Home-schoolers frequently apply to UMaine with a few college courses already on their transcripts, Oliver said.
Oliver didn’t have exact numbers, but said home-schoolers make up a good amount of UMaine students. Their numbers on the university campus have increased over the past 25 years or so, she said.
“I think home-schooling families are very concerned about the education of their children,” Oliver said. “We see some very creative, curious learners come out of the home-school environment, and they do well here.”
On average, home schooling costs about $500 a year, Homeschoolers of Maine estimates, based on curriculum costs only. That’s compared to about $9,600 annually per student in Maine’s public schools, according to Maine Department of Education numbers.
People like Hunt and Kathy Green give up full-time incomes to be full-time parents, but the Greens argue that it’s more likely people who would be stay-at-home parents anyway choose to home-school. Home-schooling parents also still pay local taxes if they own land, and therefore are paying for public education even if the child doesn’t attend local schools.
Home schooling is a welcome mix in Maine education, Kastuck said.
“Any way we can get people to work with kids to pass on the passion of learning and how to help them survive, we’re for it. There is no one way for any one child,” Kastuck said. “I think everybody is seeking ways to improve education in our society. What the heck. What do we have to lose?”