More are at home with home schooling

Star Tribune - January 31, 2006
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More are at home with home schooling:
The number of Minnesota students educated mainly that way has doubled over the past decade, and it's mostly an exurban and rural phenomenon.
David Peterson

The pressure-cooker lives that Kent and Roxanne Katterjohn once led - she as an intensive-care nurse in Chicago, he as a cameraman for NBC News - are a distant memory today at their log home in the ravine-wrinkled countryside south of Cannon Falls, Minn. The Katterjohns now say they lead a far quieter lifestyle, even though that includes home-schooling their 11 kids, who curl up in bed with algebra books or ride horses to friends' houses. It's "just idyllic. My mom calls us 'Little House on the Prairie,'" said Roxanne Katterjohn, 46.

Down the road, the superintendent of schools in the district to the south of them isn't quite as charmed. He is losing hundreds of thousands a year in state aid because so many families in the area are trying home schooling. "We're struggling financially," said Jeff Evert, superintendent of the Kenyon-Wanamingo School District, where the proportion of home-schooling students to regular students is one of the highest in the state.

At a time when school enrollments are falling, the number of kids educated mainly at home is up strongly, having doubled in the past decade to more than 17,000. According to a Star Tribune analysis, it's mostly an exurban and rural phenomenon. Parents who live in Minneapolis and St. Paul are among the least likely in the state to home-school their children. In contrast, home schooling is far more prevalent in the exurban counties to the west and north of the Twin Cities. Farther out, parents in the counties along the Interstate Hwy. 35 corridor to Duluth are among the most likely in the state to educate their children at home. "When it's in the thousands, it's a few alienated people," said Lewis Campbell, who home-schooled his daughter in Northfield until she opted to return to a traditional school. "When it's tens of thousands, it's this whole other world."

A matter of faith and family

So why is home schooling much more common outside the metro area? Some describe the phenomenon as the sign of an exurban "Bible Belt," reflecting religion's growing influence on Minnesota's culture and politics. Some religious families choose to keep kids out of schools to avoid secular influences. John Tuma, of the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators, wryly said that a map of home-schooling hot spots is a map of "what I call Minnesota's 'Bible Belt.'" Still, mapping out concentrations of evangelical Christians in the state does not always bear that out. In fact, sometimes it shows that home schooling is common in areas without large concentrations of people describing themselves as evangelicals.

Many home-schoolers say their decision is less about religion than maintaining tradition and family in a society they worry is losing touch with both. Joan Skolte, of rural Cannon Falls, is a Lutheran who begins each school day for her 12-year-old daughter, Erin, with morning devotions. But, she emphasizes other factors in her decision, including the tendency of schools to eat away at early childhood. "The push for all-day kindergarten is counterproductive to family life," she said. "It works great for families with working parents; it meets their needs; but when you're able to be home full time with your child, it's counterproductive to why you're home."

Home-schooling families also point out other reasons why many of them live in rural or semi-rural settings. One factor is likely pure economics, said Anne Hjelle, who home-schools in the countryside south of Duluth. "You obviously couldn't live in an area that's too expensive and still maintain one income," Hjelle said, noting that having just one breadwinner is the choice many home-schooling families make so that one parent can teach. Less-expensive homes far outside the metro, she added, also mean distance from the parochial schools that might draw many who home-school. "Private school would mean a lot of driving for us, not to mention the tuition," Hjelle said.

A movement with historical roots

Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom in Washington, says that today's home-schooling movement is a distant echo of 19th century battles, when Roman Catholic immigrants fought for control of public schools, then struck off on their own. "They were better off in their own schools," he said. "It's not a symptom of society ripping apart. People cluster with like-minded people."

Mitchell Stevens, associate professor of educational sociology at New York University and the author of "Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement," emphasizes the sense in which home-schoolers are part of an American mainstream. They are religious in a country that is notably religious and earnest about individually-tailored education in a society that prizes that. "The home-schooling impulse is similar to what leads to charter schools, Waldorf schools, Montessori schools - 'individualized is better than mass produced,'" Stevens said. "We have a lot more in common with home-schoolers than we think." Roxanne Katterjohn said that she has used four different math curriculums with her 11 kids, depending on what each one responds to. Church is important in why they home-school, she said, but it's only one piece. It's also about family. "Our generation was a little disassociated from our parents. As we began raising children, we wanted to change that."

Pros and cons for school districts

Despite the financial pressure that large numbers of home-schoolers can put on school districts, state Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren said to her, "I don't see it as a concern or threat to the public school system." Seagren added: "As I've watched that movement, I often see that home-school children tend to be home-schooled for their elementary years but when they start approaching middle school or high school all of a sudden families and the kids themselves want to be in band or participate in sports. It's pretty restrictive, being at home, so they kind of gravitate back to the public-school system." Evert, of the Kenyon-Wanamingo district, said he's also watched the home-schooling movement and believes most parents are doing "a very good job" educating their kids.

Evert expects the movement to have staying power, meaning his district and others will have to continue contending with its effect on finances and also how to include home-school kids in sports, band and other activities their parents can't replicate. "Ten to 15 years ago when all this stuff started," Evert said, "a lot of people assumed they'd fall on their face. But the state has opened the doors for choice, the curriculum can be inexpensive and access to the Internet opened a whole world to people. I've heard people say these kids will never make it in college, but that's not so - they're doing well." One of Evert's friends home-schooled and now has two college graduates. "Interestingly enough," Evert said, "they're going into education."