WASHINGTON, Feb 14, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Faced with long school closures
because of the coronavirus pandemic, many US parents have taken to
homeschooling to ensure their children’s education continues despite the
massive disruptions of the past year.
“It’s all me: I make the lesson plan, execute the lesson plan, then do it
again the next week,” said Catherine Strokes, whose daughter’s school shut
last year because of the pandemic.
Homeschooling “exploded” when the virus caused school closures across the
country in March 2020, according to the National Home School Association,
based in Colorado.
The number of children being taught at home in the United States rose from
between four and five million in 2019 to almost 10 million last year, the
NHSA estimates.
Nearly 51 million students, from kindergarteners to 12th graders, were
supposed to have gone to public schools after the summer of 2020, but most
schools opted for online instruction instead.
Strokes, 37, who works part-time, made her decision in July, when school
officials in Fredericksburg, Virginia were still undecided on how to start
classes the following month.
More than fear of Covid-19, it was this uncertainty that pushed her into
homeschooling.
“Like most people with a part-time job, I had to know what day my kids
would go to school, but they kept canceling school at the last minute,
lengthening break or going all virtual, it was this instability for me and my
daughter,” she told AFP.
Isabelle, aged seven and in second grade, therefore joined her big brother
Aidan, 10 and in the fifth grade, who had already been studying at home for
more than a year with his mother, a member of the Organization of Virginia
Homeschoolers.
Many parents do not want their children to spend the day staring at a
screen, believing it is bad for their health, or find it too difficult to
supervise online courses, Andrea Cubelo-McKay, president of Virginia
Homeschoolers, told AFP.
Some religious communities also educate their children at home.
This type of instruction affords a certain “flexibility,” said Strokes.
“I decide when school starts, when our day is done, I decide when we take
a break,” she said.
She takes on all subjects on the curriculum — reading, writing, science
and math — so that Isabelle doesn’t fall behind her in-school classmates,
but she does concentrate on what she considers most important.
– A ‘challenge’ –
But NHSA President J. Allen Weston said the transition can be “a
challenge” for children used to traditional school.
There is a “huge difference” between home instruction and virtual lessons,
he told AFP.
It is also difficult for parents who must juggle their job and their role
as teacher, while lacking benchmarks for performance, said Cubelo-McKay.
“Every day is different and challenging,” said Strokes. “One will have a
good day while the other… may or may not be cooperative, some subjects are
harder to teach than others.”
A massive campaign to vaccinate teachers is underway in the United States,
which should make it possible to safely reopen schools.
The cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, with the three largest
school districts in the country, have plans to gradually reopen, but some
parents are reluctant to put their children back in school next year.
“For next year I really don’t know, it will depend on how the school
handles the fall, the sanitary measures, and how they make up for lost
learning for virtual students,” said Amber Lancaster, the mother of a third-
grader who has been homeschooling in Richmond, Virginia, since September.
She said her son gives her a “nine out of 10” for this year, even though
he misses class discussions with his friends.
Currently unemployed, Lancaster is ready to carry on homeschooling for
another year. “I’m not opposed to one more year of homeschooling, it will be
third grade, not too complicated,” she said.
According to the Urban Institute think tank, local authorities fear a drop
in the number of students, believing that homeschooling is not a substitute
for classroom education.
This youthful brain drain from schools could also affect the funding
allocated to school districts, which is calculated each year in part based on
enrollment numbers.