Iris Alonso’s children are academically thriving. That wasn’t the case last March, however, soon after the pandemic hit.
Like many, the Alonso family struggled when their children’s charter school switched to asynchronous learning using videos and daily online assignments. Alonso said she tried to help her children — ages 6, 9, and 12 — understand and submit their work on time, but with numerous teachers, it soon became overwhelming.
The Bryan mom said she knew something needed to change before the start of school in August. With an at-risk daughter, returning to the classroom was not an option. So Alonso did what she felt she had to do — she quit her job as a patient care advocate at CHI St. Joseph Health and became a home-schooling mom.
There have been challenges and successes. Alonso says it has been difficult to academically challenge her sixth grade daughter, but for the first time, her third grade son is excited about school.
Alonso’s story is not unique as families see home schooling as a viable solution to the pandemic’s educational shake-ups.
The Alonso family is one of an estimated 150,000 home-schooling families in Texas, according to the Texas Home School Coalition’s website. New and longtime home-schoolers said the benefits are worth the challenges and share similar views on home schooling’s future. Statistics show home-schoolers in college perform at equal levels as traditional-school students.
The number of home-schoolers has been increasing since the 1990s, says Stephen Howsley, THSC’s assistant manager of public policy. This summer, 46 area parents contacted THSC for help withdrawing their children from traditional school, Howsley says, over a 650% increase from summer 2019. Almost all cited COVID-19 concerns, he adds.
Engaging children through virtual learning is a major difficulty, says Matthew J. Etchells, adjunct instructor in Texas A&M University’s College of Education and Human Development.
“For a child to sit for hours in front of a screen at home at a young age is counter — is absolutely counter — to how you would design a learning experience for a child of that age,” Etchells says.
Home schooling provides greater flexibility than traditional schooling and can incorporate tutors, co-ops, or similar classes, according to the THSC website. With home schooling, parents are fully responsible for their child’s education, unlike distance learning, where parents help their child follow the school’s direction, according to THSC’s website.
Texas is one of the least-regulated states for home-schooling, and no agency verifies the minimum curriculum requirements, Howsley says.
This lack of regulations surprised Alonso.
“I thought there was going to be a lot more to it,” she adds. “It was like ‘Where do I go sign up? What do I have to do?’
“And all I had to do was write a letter to the school,” Alonso says.
Stepping away from the public-school mindset is a benefit of home schooling, says Glynda Bricker, administrator of the local Beyond Appearances Co-op. Bricker has been home-schooling her eight children for 24 years and has graduated five from high school.
Home-schooling parents do not have to follow a traditional school schedule and can focus on teaching to their kid’s interests, Bricker says.
Alonso says she is still learning to adapt to this mentality.
“It’s so different from what we have been trained to think school is,” she explains.
Family bonds are central to a successful home-schooling experience, says Alice Lawrence, former coordinator of Preparing and Equipping with a Purpose. The local co-op, which incorporated more than 50 families, dissolved earlier this year when Lawrence says she felt God calling her to focus on her job as a full-time home-schooling mom.
“It’s all about relationship,” she says. “If you miss the relationship with your kids, then you’re not going to be able to impart any wisdom.”
Lawrence says she believes many new home-schooling families will enjoy developing closer ties.
Alonso says she is one of these moms. “I’m learning all about my kids all over again,” she says. “I’m learning what they like, what they don’t like, how annoying they can be sometimes, what triggers us, what makes us mad. You don’t think about any of that while you’re in school because somebody else is doing that for you.”
Home schooling presents its own set of challenges, Alonso says. With a GED diploma as her highest level of education, she says she felt unqualified to home-school among parents with college degrees.
“Home-schooling my children terrified me,” she says. “I was like ‘I don’t know if I’m smart enough.’”
Teaching is not a simple skill, Etchells says, especially for parents who were unprepared for the task. “This is a massively complicated thing we’re asking parents to do,” he says. “Teaching is not something you can just pick up like a screwdriver and use.”
The responsibility can intimidate even longtime home-schoolers, Bricker says. “That’s always something that’s on the parent’s mind, because when you’re the one responsible, you certainly don’t want to mess up your child’s entire future because you didn’t teach them the multiplication tables at the right time,” she explains.
Keeping things in perspective is the key to overcoming this fear, Bricker adds. “There is no child that learns everything they need to know in school,” she says.
Etchells says the home schoolers he has taught in college are academically equal to public-school students. “There’s a whole lot of people who home-schooled who turned out just fine,” he adds. “It’s not like ‘Oh, I survived home schooling.’”
Texas A&M graduation rates are identical for both groups, with 52.05% of home schoolers and 52.53% of traditional-school students graduating in four years, according to an analysis of data from the university’s Data and Research Services.
Home-schoolers had higher first-year college GPAs, averaging 2.78, compared to traditional-school students’ average of 2.59 in a 2004 Colorado study from the Journal of College Admission.
Many colleges actively recruit home-schooled students because of their academic dedication and self-motivation, Lawrence says.
The Brazos County home-schooling community offers many academic and social resources for families, Lawrence says. Alonso says the support has been valuable but wishes the community offered a centralized site to help new home schoolers identify these opportunities.
The pandemic’s long-term effects on home schooling remain to be seen, says Samantha Field, government relations director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education. The national group advocates for oversight to support home-schooled students and is led by members of the first generation of home-schooled graduates from the 1980s, Field says.
Parents should always act in their child’s best interests when considering educational methods, she advises. “Home-schooling should be pursued when it’s the best option for the child,” Field says. “Parents need to be open to the idea that home-schooling may be a good option at one point and may become not a good option at later points.”
Bricker says she believes many families will remain home-schooling long after the pandemic while others will be glad to send their kid back to public school. “It’s really going to end up being a personal decision,” she says. “A lot of it is going to depend on the family setup, the dynamic of the family, what they’re looking for.”
Alonso said her choice is already clear. “We’re in this for the long-run now,” she says. “I love it. The kids seem to be flourishing.”
