Thinking Outside the Box - Meeting the Needs of Homeschooling Families

Kym Wright
Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer

The first day of school, with nearly 15,000 students enrolled in Pre-K –12, and only a small portion of them arrive before the starting bell. Is the principal worried? With a large number of his school’s pupils tagged as “off-campus students,” many of the students do not show up for all-day classes. Instead, this school serves classes up cafeteria-style letting the students pick and choose which courses to take to meet their unique needs and specific goals. This is the way many Christian schools are choosing to work with homeschooling students in their states. Most view their off-campus courses as “supplementing what the parents are doing at home.”

Why do Christian school administrators choose to work with homeschoolers, when it apparently creates more work and has inherent hassles? In Time magazine the Federal Government statistic was quoted that nearly 1 in 5 homeschool students takes at least one class in a public or private school. With homeschooling growing at an estimated rate of 11% per year, both homeschooling and homeschoolers’ involvement in private schools seem to be trends that are definitely here to stay. According to NHERI President, and education researcher, Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., “this healthy synergy would require both public [and private] school administrators and homeschoolers to stop being so suspicious of one another.”

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