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But for now, home schooling is still growing at about 11% a year, and it's no longer confined to a conservative fringe that never believed in the idea of public education anyway. "Very different people are entering home schooling than did 20 years back," says Mitchell Stevens, author of Kingdom of Children, a history of home schooling to be published next month by Princeton University Press. According to the Federal Government, up to three-quarters of the families that home school today say they do so primarily because, like so many of us, they are worried about the quality of their children's education. A recent report by the state of Florida found that just a quarter of families in that state practice home schooling for religious reasons. The new home schoolers haven't completely given up on public education, at least not the idea of it. "The problem is that schools have abandoned their mission," says Luigi Manca, a communications professor at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., who home schools his daughter Nora, 17. "They've forgotten about educating."
William Bennett used to be the U.S. Secretary of Education, but today he travels the nation to preach the home-school gospel. "I'm here to talk about the revolution of common sense," he told a Denver home-schooling conference in June. Working himself up to promote K12, his slick, new, for-profit online school for home schoolers, Bennett even suggested that "maybe we should subcontract all of public education to home schoolers." It was strange to watch a man once responsible for federal aid to public schools urge people to desert them. Imagine if Colin Powell gave a speech saying we should disband the U.S. Army and assemble local militias.
But many are following. They are folks like Tim and Lisa Dean of Columbia, Md., working parents (he manages technical support for the U.S. Senate; she's a part-time attorney) who home school Bitsy, 5, and Teddy, 4. Contrary to the old picture of home schoolers, Tim doesn't leave all the teaching to his wife, and they helped start a home-school support group two years ago that includes parents who are gay and straight; black, white, Asian American and biracial; Democrat and Republican.
The conservative Christians who worked so hard in the 1980s to make home schooling legal in every state are as committed as ever, but more politically moderate Christians have also joined the movement. Susie Capraro, who home schools her son and daughter, used to be part of the Broward County Parent Support Group, the largest home-schooling network in Florida and one founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Although she considers herself a Fundamentalist Christian, Capraro didn't like group rules that keep non-Christians from leadership roles--or other exclusionary gestures, like the ice skating event that featured only Christian music. "We wanted a place where people could get the support they needed without the religion," says Capraro, who along with 10 families co-founded Home Educators Lending Parents Support. "[Religion is] not the purpose of our group, but rather to get together for the best education." Today the three-year-old organization includes more than 150 families representing Evangelicals as well as Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others.