"[O]n average, poor families spent 25 percent of their annual income for their children to attend public four-year colleges in 2000, compared with 13 percent in 1980. For middle-class families, the percentage of annual income required to attend public colleges nearly doubled as well, to about 7 percent from 4 percent. For the wealthiest families, there was no increase from the 2 percent spent in 1980."

(Source: Jacques Steinberg, "More Family Income Committed to College," The New York Times, May 2, 2002.)

"A program to help schoolchildren earn good grades and get along with others unexpectedly led to fewer pregnancies by age 21, even though the project involved no sex education...'These results fit with our theory that if children become bonded to school and committed to achieving in school during the elementary grades, they are less likely to risk that bond by engaging in behavior that puts their future success at risk'..."

(Source: Associated Press, "Bonding May Alter Teens' Choices," The Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2002, pg. D4.)

According to data from the 1999 Parent Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program, "Approximately 850,000 students were being homeschooled during the spring of 1999, ....Homeschoolers accounted for 1.78 percent of students nationwide, ages 5 to 17, with a grade equivalent of kindergarten through grade 12."

The U.S. government report states: "Characteristics that distinguished high percentages of homeschooling were two-parent families, especially when only one parent participated in the labor force; large family size; and parents' educational attainment."  The group that showed the highest homeschooling participation, at 4.6 percent, was two-parent families, with only one parent working (s.e. = 0.55).  Compared with the rest of the school age population, "80 percent of homeschooled students lived in two-parent families compared to 66 percent for nonhomeschoolers.  In addition, 52 percent of homeschoolers came from two-parent families where only one parent was participation in the labor force compared to 19 percent for nonhomeschoolers."

Other studies have described the parental rationale for homeschooling as being "moral of religious reasons, a desire for high educational achievement, dissatisfaction with public schools' instructional program, and concerns about school environment, including safety, drugs, and peer pressure."  The current study, by and large, reinforces these earlier observations of parental reasons.  The number one reason parents gave for homeschooling their children was "Can give a better education at home" (48.9%, s.e. = 3.79), followed by "Religious reasons" (38.4 percent, s.e. = 4.44), and "Poor learning environment at school (25.6 %, s.e. =3.44).  "Family reasons," at 16.8 percent, and "To develop character/morality" at 15.1 percent, round out the top five reasons given by parents.

(Source: Stacey Bielick, Kathryn Chandler, and Stephen P. Broughman, Homeschooling in the United States: 1999, NCES 2001-033, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, July 2001.)