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But this healthy synergy would require both public school administrators and home schoolers to stop being so suspicious one another. That may take years. Too many public school administrators silently agree with what Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, says in objecting to any public expenditure on home schoolers: "Putting money into home schooling is throwing money down a rathole. You have no idea if that money is being spent properly or children are benefiting."
For their part, many home schoolers take the hard line of the movement's leading advocacy group, the Home School Legal Defense Association. It avoids representing home schoolers who are trying to get access to public school services that their taxes help fund. Many home schoolers feel that exposes the movement to too much government interference. "We are really afraid," says James Carper, an education historian at the University of South Carolina, who home schools. "When public schools extend the opportunity to become involved, it is inevitably going to compromise our independence."
But newer apostles of home schooling like William Bennett believe the future holds more cooperation. He says school administrators will work to develop a "Chinese-menu-style education," for instance, that allows home schoolers to have a math class here and a band course there without buying the whole K-12 puu-puu platter. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether public schools can still play a vital role in communities if they become simply another consumer good pushed by market forces and not a common good that transcends them.
--With reporting by Steve Barnes/Little Rock, Amy Bonesteel and Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Beau Briese/Cambridge, Deborah Fowler/Houston, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles, Maggie Sieger/Chicago and Rebecca Winters/New York