ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605060113
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
They stay at home or travel across state. They spend the day swimming or studying bugs.
They're children who are home schooled. They might have regular school hours and spelling tests every Friday. Or, they might design their own curriculum, spending months on one subject and never being tested.
Many excel academically, at least in areas that interest them. Two of the three winners in the recent Virginia Geography Bee had no public or private school listed beside their names. They were home schooled.
No matter the style, or whether the motivation is religious or academic, home schooling is becoming more and more popular both nationwide and in the New River Valley.
About 1 percent of school-age children in the state, or 8,678 pupils, were home schooled last year. That's up about 780 children from last year, according to the Virginia Department of Education,
Membership in the Home School Legal Defense Fund, a national organization co-founded by Virginia lawyer Mike Farris, has grown from 1,000 to over 50,000 members in the 13 years since it was founded, according to spokesperson Jennie Ethel.
Families decide to school their children at home for any number of reasons, including religious convictions, fear of negative peer pressure, or the desire to maintain a close relationship with their child.
"We simply wanted to allow our children to develop at their own speeds," said Gibson Worsham, a Blacksburg architect and father of four. "School tends to force children into a mold - we just had the opportunity to let them learn at their own pace at home."
A family's decision to teach their children at home has an impact far beyond their front door.
It affects the amount of state money school systems receive in Virginia.
In Floyd County, 63 children-3 percent of the county's school-age children-study at home. Public school attendance is 1,869. The county receives $3,000 in state funding for each child enrolled in public school.
Superintendent Terry Arbogast said while the school system is more than willing to work with parents planning to teach from home, he does not welcome the competition for dollars that inevitably results.
Legally, Virginia parents have a relatively easy path if they choose to walk the home school route.
Parents can go before the local school board and apply for a religious exemption, which entitles them to choose their own teaching methods and curriculum. Parents who take the exemption do not have to update the school system on their child's progress at any time.
Parents also can home school if they meet one of four criteria: The primary teaching parent has a college diploma; the parent is a certified teacher; the children use a correspondence course that meets state criteria; parents submit their own curriculum to be approved by the school system.
Home-schooling parents who don't have a religious exemption are required to document their child's progress each year.
Children can go to school to take standardized tests, or parents can purchase the tests on their own. They can even submit a portfolio of the year's work to the school system.
Home-schooled children who take standardized tests are required to score as well or better than children in the bottom fourth of their age group.
In 1994, Bob Jones University Press, a processor for the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, analyzed scores from children taught in public schools and those taught at home.
The study, paid for by the Home School Legal Defense Fund, found home-school students scored in the top fourth of children in their age group.
The study included students from all 50 states and tried to match demographics, a difficult task because home-schooled children tend to be a homogenous group.
According to the Defense Fund, 75 percent of home-schooled children are Christians "who place a strong emphasis on orthodox and conservative Biblical doctrine. Over 90 [percent] are white/Anglo."
But high test scores may not be enough for some colleges.
David Bousquet, director of admissions for Virginia Tech, said the university relies a great deal on test scores, but also on the reputation of a given high school. Assessing the quality of a curriculum can be more difficult with home schoolers, he said.
Marshall Leitch, a former teacher who now directs the New River Valley unit of the Virginia Education Association, said parents should have the option to home school.
But no matter how detailed and complete a family's curriculum may be, "there are certain things that cannot be duplicated in the home environment," he said.
"What we expect children to know these days - from a computer to understanding what's going on in Bosnia to the difference between CNN and [the television show] `Hard Copy' - all of that calls for a very complicated and dynamic curriculum that requires, in my opinion, many more heads than one."
Most educators and parents agree that the one-on-one attention children receive from their parents helps the child's learning. But without interaction with other children, do these children learn social skills?
Several studies from across the county say yes. Having parents as a positive role model gives the child a better self-concept and they can interact securely with adults and children alike.
But Leitch said the purpose of school is not just to teach children how to get along.
"Handling a lot of different experiences helps them learn to navigate through that very complicated and confusing world and learn how to make choices from millions of options," he said.
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM. Ann Houston studies a grammar workbook at herby CNBdesk in her family's home in Floyd County (ran on NRV-1). color.