For two or three days per week, students come together to a
building, attend classes with regular teachers, and have classmates. The rest
of the week, the students work on their own at home.
By Eric
Wearne
August 18, 2017
School choice in America typically comes in
two main flavors: programs set up by states and cities for poor or needy
students (such as limiting private choice to special-needs or foster care
students and placing charter schools specifically in underperforming areas),
and “natural” choice as wealthy parents can exercise, either by paying tuition
or by moving to more desirable public school systems.
The poor in many places and the wealthy
everywhere can access choice, but a fairly significant group typically gets
left out: the middle 60-80 percent or so of the country, who are too wealthy to
access state or local choice programs, but not wealthy enough to write $10,000
(or more) checks to send each of their children to private school. One form of
school has been growing around the country to address this niche: “hybrid
homeschools.”
“Hybrid homeschools” is a term of art.
These schools might be considered more formal versions of homeschool co-ops.
Co-ops are groups of homeschooling families who come together to find, say, a
tutor to teach all of their students Latin, or chemistry.
A hybrid homeschool typically operates more
as a formal school. For two or three days per week, students come together to a
building, attend classes with regular teachers, and have classmates, just as at
a typical school. The rest of the week, the students work on their own at home.
Examples include St.
John Bosco Academy outside Atlanta, or all of the schools in the University-Model Schools
International network.
What Kind of People Like This Arrangement?
I have done some initial research (with more forthcoming)
to determine who exactly these families are. Do they look more like private
school parents? Like full-time homeschoolers? Have they used other forms of
schooling? Most importantly, why do people choose these schools?
First, these parents are abnormal
demographically. In two separate surveys, one in Georgia and another using
respondents from five states, 60 percent of responding families had an average
annual income of over $100,000. While the tuition these schools charge may make
them more accessible to the middle class (more on that below), it is the upper
middle class who is enrolling there now. Compared to the average American,
these parents are also more likely to be married, more likely to have a college
degree, and are more suburban.
Second, these parents come from a variety
of previous schooling environments. In my five-state survey, 22.6 percent had
mainly used other full-time private schools in the past, 21.7 percent had been
full-time homeschoolers, 28 percent had been in public school, and 23.2 percent
said they had always used a hybrid homeschool. (Another 4.5 percent named “some
other” form of schooling on the survey, typically meaning an online school).
Lastly, what do parents say they value in
these schools? In both surveys, parents listed “smaller class sizes,”
“religious education,” “better learning environment,” “less time wasted during
the school day,” and “more individual attention for my child” as their top
reasons for attending a hybrid homeschool.
When asked to state their “most important”
reason, parents said “religious education,” “more meaningful opportunities for
parent involvement,” or “better learning environment.” Perhaps interestingly, 0
percent of parents listed “better teachers,” “higher test scores,” “less gang
activity,” or “supplemental services” as their most important reason, although
these are the types of things we typically worry about or build school
improvement efforts around and spend extra money on.
Why People Like This
Parents also provided open-ended reasons
for why they chose these schools. These included:
Family: Hybrid homeschool parents value the
time they get to spend with their children and the influence they are able to
maintain over them, while valuing the classroom environment and school culture.
Education Support: These parents like the
combination of school work and teacher-led accountability (lesson planning and
grading), and the pace of homeschool life on the home days.
Flexibility: If a student only has classes
at school Monday and Wednesday, or Tuesday and Thursday, then his family is
sometimes able to travel or do more enrichment activities with those longer
weekends. Also, several respondents said their children were high-level
athletes or performers, and the hybrid schedule gave them more time to train.
Religious/Political: All of the schools in
these surveys were Christian, in some form. Many respondents expressed
displeasure with the curriculum or culture of public schools (some typical
responses: “no state-mandated testing,” and “no Common Core”).
A final noteworthy aspect of these schools
is their cost. In the South, especially, with very little history of Catholic
schools staffed by nuns, private school tuition is regularly $10,000 or more
per student annually. Hybrid homeschools, in contrast, because they typically
employ all or nearly all part-time teachers and operate out of part-time rented
facilities, are often able to charge annual tuition in the $3,000-$6,000 range.
This is well within striking distance of many education savings account program
proposals, and several schools are attached to organizations managing state
tax-credit programs.
Given that these schools require several
components to work—a community with the capacity to run a private school, and
someone available to homeschool students a few days per week—hybrid homeschools
are likely not an answer for every student in the country. They do seem to be a
popular option among the growing number of parents looking for alternative
schooling arrangements.
Eric Wearne is an associate professor of
education at Georgia Gwinnett College, near Atlanta. Follow him on Twitter at
@eric_wearne.
