Home Schooling: More Than A Million Kids And Growing: Can It Work For Your Family?

Kids with special needs--gifted or learning disabled--are more likely than most to benefit from home schooling, researchers say, but only if their parents have the right training and resources. Ryan Abradi, a 10-year-old who lives in central Maine, started multiplying when he was just 2 1/2, and even then understood the concept of negative numbers. ""From the beginning, he seemed hard-wired for math,'' says his mother, Valerie, a mechanical engineer. When he reached school age, she checked out the local gifted program and could tell right away that Ryan was already well beyond it. ""He had no patience,'' she says. ""He was intolerant of the questions other kids would ask.'' Ryan is now happily at home, working his way through second-semester college calculus.

Home-schooling parents reject critics' claims that their kids aren't well socialized. Many of them say they've overcome the isolation by getting kids involved in Scouts, 4-H or sports teams. ""Ninety percent of these kids play with people outside their families,'' says Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute. But home-schooled kids themselves say they are different--in both good and bad ways. They're probably more likely to be independent and self-motivated, but group activities can be a struggle. Eighteen-year-old Jon Williams of Missoula, Mont., is clearly outgoing and confident: he's a Republican candidate for his state's legislature. But Williams, who has been home schooled since ninth grade, credits the eight years he spent in Christian school with helping him hone his basic social skills. He doesn't buy group activities like sports as the great socializers. ""You get a whole bunch of regressive kids together, and they all tend to be really shy,'' he says.

Social isolation can be especially damaging in the middle-school years, says Coleman of the University of North Carolina. ""Parents have this Pollyanna view that they're going to keep their kids away from bad influences,'' he says, ""when kids biologically and psychosocially are going to want to push away'' from their families.

At some point, of course, home-schooled kids will move out on their own. What lessons will serve them best? The ultimate goal of any educational path is to inspire love of learning, a passion that lasts a lifetime. One vision of what the future might hold for a few members of this new generation of home schoolers is embodied in the Not Back to School Camp, an annual late-summer gathering held in the woods near the Oregon coast. The camp is run by Grace Llewellyn, author of ""The Teenage Liberation Handbook.'' Not a parent herself, Llewellyn was inspired to promote home schooling by the writing of education reformer John Holt. So while the rest of America was preparing for another season in the blackboard jungle, 162 home-schooled teenagers spent their days going to theater workshops and lectures on subjects like Radical Honesty, and generally taking comfort in the company of kindred spirits. ""There's no reason for kids to be isolated,'' she says.

And indeed, isolation was the last thing on Caitlin Stern's mind. The 15-year-old longtime home schooler spent much of the last year studying bald eagles with a biologist in her hometown of Haines, Alaska. At the camp, she was busy running from workshop to workshop--taking charge of her own education. ""I don't have time for school,'' she says. ""I have way too much stuff to do.''

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