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Despite Tough Times, Home Schooling Persists

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The Associated Press

Published: March 8, 2009

When hard times reached the Schneider household in central Oregon, longtime stay-at-home mom Colleen Schneider took action - getting a job at Subway to offset a drop in her husband's earnings. What she didn't do was also notable: She didn't stop home schooling her three teenage children.

Schneider works evenings so she's home for her favored morning teaching hours. The family scrimps - more frozen pizza, less eating out. But an inflexible 9-to-5 job that would force her to quit home schooling was not an option.

"I would fight tooth and nail to home school," said Schneider, 47, a devout Roman Catholic who wants to convey her values to her children. "I'm making it work because it's my absolute priority."

Other families across the country are making similar decisions - college-age children chipping in with their earnings, laid-off fathers sharing teaching duties, mothers taking part-time jobs - with the goal of continuing to home school in the face of economic setbacks.

Before the recession, the ranks of home-schooled students had been growing by an estimated 8 percent annually; the latest federal figures, from 2007, calculate the total at about 1.5 million.

Although some families are giving up because of a stay-at-home parent's need to get a job, overall , the recession will likely be a further boost to home schooling, according to parents and educators interviewed by The Associated Press.

"We're going to see continued growth," said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. "The reasons parents home-educate are not passing, faddish things."

Clearwater Academy Sees Rise

At Allendale Academy in Clearwater, which provides resources for home-schoolers, enrollment has risen 50 percent during the past two years to about 900 students as families desert private schools, says academy director Patricia Carter.

"Often one parent has been laid off," she said. "That makes private school tuition impossible, and they don't want to send their kids back to public school."

Her academy charges $65 a year to support students through eighth grade, $95 for high school students, compared with private school tuitions often running many thousands of dollars a year.

For frugal families, home schooling can be a good fit. Used academic material is available at low cost; free research resources are on tap on the Internet and at libraries.

"Home-schoolers are pretty self-reliant," said Judy Aron of West Hartford, Conn., who has home-schooled three children. "They'd rather cut back on other things. ... They very vehemently don't want to see themselves as victims."

Michael Marcucci of Middlebury, Conn., is president of the Connecticut Homeschool Network, which has about 1,500 member families, including 34 who signed up in January alone.

"During difficult times, people tend to go back to basics," Marcucci said. "I know a family with five children - the father's been out of work 18 months and they're still home schooling."

His own family, with three home-schooled children, got a taste of that challenge last year when Marcucci, a banker, was out of work for six months. His wife continued home schooling, rather than seek a job, and he supplemented his job-hunting with teaching stints of his own.

"It was a chance to reconnect with family, to get to know your children in a different way," he said. "I was excited about the opportunity to teach Greek history, to help out with algebra."

'No Belt Left To Tighten'

Andrea Farrier, a mother of three girls from Kalona, Iowa, does double-duty - home schooling her daughters and working part time for her school district as a supervisory teacher for 23 other home-school families.

Several are struggling financially - in some cases because of a father's layoff - but abandoning home schooling so the mother can find a job is not their response, Farrier said.

"These families are already sacrificing - when times get tough, there's no belt left to tighten," she said. "These are families who home school because public education wouldn't serve the needs of their children - it's the last thing they'll give up."

Among Farrier's colleagues - both as a home-schooling mom and as a part-time teacher - is Crystal Gingerich, 44, of Kinross, Iowa.

Her husband, Joe, used to be a self-employed electrician, but business dwindled and he's now a truck driver whose routes keep him away from home except on weekends.

That leaves her single-handedly running the household on weekdays and teaching her children, ages 15, 13, 10 and 4.

"It's definitely shifted the pressure load on me in terms of being a single parent when he's gone," Gingerich said. "But I'm doing what I love."

In Southfield, Mich., mother of eight Abbey Waterman said she's able to continue home schooling her four youngest children thanks to support from the four oldest, who have been willing to chip in with earnings from caddying, guitar playing and tutoring.

"We're used to making a lot out of a little," she said.

Schneider hopes to leave Subway soon to work as a caregiver for the elderly, but she's intent on continuing to home school.

"I've seen too much good come out of it to change now," she said.

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