Economy dents home schooling

Times are tougher for the Roberts family in Provo.

Dad, who works in the title industry, has taken a pay cut. Mom, who used to devote most of her day to home-schooling her children, has started a couple of small businesses.

Even the children, ranging in age from 9 to 19, are starting to pitch in the money they earn doing janitorial work to cover family expenses.

But no one's complaining. That's just what had to be done to make sure Maile Roberts could be at home to give the clan the education she feels is best.

"Home schooling is very important to me," Roberts said. "I just feel that it is a more nurturing environment for my children. Public school is very competitive and impersonal in comparison."

Roberts considered getting a job teaching at a commonwealth school, but after a long, hard discussion with her husband, she decided she needed to be home for her children.

"We've had to make some lifestyle changes, but we're making things work," she said.

Nationwide, families are making similarly difficult decisions to make sure their children get a home-tailored education. In many families, children are chipping in with their earnings, laid-off fathers are sharing teaching duties, mothers are taking part-time jobs — all with the goal of continuing to home-school in the face of economic setbacks.

Stay-at-home mom Kristie Carlson is pretty confident her husband's job as a computer programmer in Provo isn't in danger. But she isn't so optimistic, watching Utah layoff statistics climb, that she hasn't made plans to ensure she can afford to continue home-schooling her three children.

"If something goes wrong, we're moving to Arkansas to live with my parents," the Spanish Fork mother said. "It's worth it. Home schooling is what I like. I enjoy being there to watch my children learn."

Before the recession, the ranks of home-school students had been growing by an estimated 8 percent annually; the latest federal figures, from 2007, calculate the total at about 1.5 million. Most parents and educators predict the overall recession will actually boost the trend.

'We're going to see continued growth," said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. "The reasons parents home-educate are not passing, faddish things."

Christopher Klicka of Warrenton, Va., senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association and co-teacher along with his wife of seven home-schooled children, says hard times enhance home schooling's appeal as private school tuition becomes unaffordable and some public schools contemplate cutbacks.

"People are looking to home schooling as an alternative more now in light of economic circumstances," he said, citing its low cost and potential for strengthening family bonds.