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Of course, unschooling lies at an extreme. Home-schooling families fall along a continuum between copying the traditional classroom and "learning" by building Mommy and Daddy a lovely cedar deck. The success of the venture may depend more on the parents than the kids. If they are like Marilyn and Gene McGinnis of Atlanta, devout Mennonites who nonetheless make a conscious effort to teach their children about other cultures and religions, home schooling can broaden and enrich children's minds as much as any schooling. Home schooling also works when parents are like the Deckers in Katy, Texas, parents of five, who were humble enough to get help from another home-schooling parent for a child of theirs who was struggling with spelling.
"You have to feel like you're on a mission," says Ronnie Palache, who pulled Spencer, 9, from fourth grade in Tarzana, Calif., because the boy was bored and unchallenged but also has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. "I wake up every morning saying two things to myself: 'I'm on a mission to have Spencer turn out O.K.' and 'I have to live outside the box.'"
And even then maybe it's not enough. Robert Phillipps of Glendale, Calif., began home schooling Bill, 15, and Denise, 11, four years ago. He works hard at it and carefully tracks what his kids are learning. But he can't provide an art class at home even though Denise likes to sketch, and ice skating three days a week has to count for PE. The kids read great books, but they have no one outside the family with whom to discuss them during class. As Phillipps says, "There is no one to hide behind. What you do is yours."
But if home schooling is flawed, and our public schools are weathered, some believe there's a way to improve both by reinvesting home schoolers in their communities and making public schools more nimble. A few school districts are showing the way. In some states, including California and Texas, school districts now allow home-schooled kids to sign up for such offerings as a physics class or the football team. A growing number of districts are opening resource centers where home schoolers come for class once or twice a week. In Orange County, Calif., two school districts have combined two reform ideas by opening charter schools that offer home-schooling programs.
This cooperation is largely motivated by self-interest--many schools can regain at least a percentage of their per-pupil funding by counting home schoolers, who get more options without being fully part of the system. "These programs can win parents back when they see the school is willing to offer alternative forms of education," says Patricia Lines, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and one of the foremost experts on home schooling. "There's something very efficient about [traditional] schooling, and home schooling isn't exactly efficient." That's one reason TIME found so many home schoolers who had formed de facto "schools" that offer science labs and basketball teams.