Public Campus for the Home-Schooled Blurs Lines

Susie Stratton was sitting across a table from teacher Becky Kobold. The table was strewn with the school work of Stratton’s 6-year-old daughter, Devyn, and the two women were discussing the child’s progress in reading, math, writing and geography.

But this was not the typical conference between parent and teacher. Stratton is a committed home-schooler who wants to “instill God” in Devyn and her younger sister, Breanna. And the school where the meeting took place is collecting about $4,600 a year from the state to help with her educational mission.

The Academy for Academic Excellence, or, as it is also known, the Lewis Center for Educational Research, is a California charter school in San Bernardino County’s Apple Valley. That means it operates independently of a school district but is publicly supported. It is free from some--though by no means all--state regulation.

According to the school’s charter, the 750 students it serves must be home-schooled. Although they come to campus for some classes and activities, most of the teaching and learning is done at home, with standardized lesson plans, books and advice paid for by the state.

It is a confusing situation, given the strict delineations that govern most American education. The academy blurs the lines between public and private, home and school, church and state, and parents and teachers. A bill now pending in the California Legislature would impose new rules on such “independent study” schools, to make sure they are indeed using the public money for students and not just pocketing it.

Charter advocates estimate that about 40,000 students in California are enrolled in schools that somehow combine a little classwork with a lot of independent study or home schooling. The state’s total bill, then, is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The taxpayers are reinforcing private values and private education at home,” said Bruce Fuller, head of Policy Analysis for California Education at UC Berkeley. “The question is: Where do you draw the line and how big a price are we willing to pay for innovation?”

Such hybrid arrangements are likely to proliferate, however. The sponsors of such schools are tapping into and fomenting concerns among many parents that traditional schools are hidebound and unable to customize their programs to account for students’ individual needs.

The academy did not begin at the behest of parents. It was a science center that the Apple Valley Unified School District suggested be spun off as a state-funded charter school because of its hefty cost to the district.

But now the school has a waiting list of several hundred--and it is clearly satisfying parental demand.

Stratton, for example, brings her children to campus once a week for violin lessons, exercise and a two-hour class with other children taught by Kobold. Once a month, she reports to Kobold on their progress.

At her meeting last week, for example, she displayed a journal in which Devyn had declared, “I love Jesus. I went to school. God is the greatest.”

“Last year I home-schooled on my own and I was lost,” Stratton said. “It’s comforting to know someone’s willing to help you when you have questions--and there are so many questions.”

At the end of the counseling session, Stratton signed a form certifying that Devyn and Breanna had perfect attendance, meaning they’d been home every day. “That’s how we get our ADA,” Kobold said.

ADA, or “average daily attendance,” determines how much state money a school gets per pupil. The academy is expected to receive about $3.7 million from the state this year. But according to its budget, it will spend 20% more than that, with the difference made up by grants from foundations, the federal government and individual donors, including parents.

The academy is able to provide a lavish array of services only the most expensive private schools could afford. The school has one fully licensed teacher for every 19 students, but many classes are far smaller than that, since classes meet only a few hours a week and not all students attend.

Children study Latin beginning in kindergarten, Spanish starting in third grade and Greek word roots in fifth grade. Musical offerings include Suzuki-style violin lessons beginning in kindergarten, as well as instruction in cello, piano and drums.

Students can even learn to fly in an aviation class and are given a chance to work with a radio telescope to gather real data for NASA.

“Our philosophy is that it’s those enriching things that get parents to your school,” said Rick Piercy, a former kindergarten teacher and the main force behind the school. And it is parents, he says, who must be in charge of, and responsible for, their children’s education.

That, of course, is consistent with the philosophy of many home-schoolers. Until recently, most parents who chose to educate their children at home were politically conservative and wary of the government. They also tended to be deeply religious.

Lateicha Jordan and her husband, for example, were concerned that their children were being exposed to unsavory influences in the public schools. Plus, she said, “They weren’t getting what they needed. So I prayed about it, and it felt like God wanted us to come out of public education.”

Now her four school-age children are enrolled in the academy. Kasmine, 6, and Jason, 5, take only violin, Latin and a crafts class.

The Jordans’ 11-year-old, however, is a special education student, as is a quarter of the academy’s enrollment. She gets on-campus instruction in all her academic subjects, plus chorus and drama. That is considered just the starting point for the teaching her parents do at home.

“They just offer a lot of great things here, and you’re not going to get this in public education,” Jordan said.

Reminded that the school is public, Jordan, like many of the parents and teachers at the academy, catches herself. It’s clear that they don’t think of it that way.

The appeal of the academy has grown beyond what Piercy calls hard-core home-schoolers. New students are coming from public and private schools as far away as Pasadena, Lancaster and Big Bear.

Scott Fritz, a 54-year-old part-time county worker, drives 40 miles to take Patty, his 14-year-old daughter, to campus three times a week. He sticks around while she is in class and does “whatever needs to be done--shovel dirt or file papers or move boxes.”

Patty was an honor student in public school, but she began getting Fs when illness kept her home.

“My wife and I were determined that our daughter was going to get an education--no matter what,” he said.

The academy expects the parents, no matter what their background, to carry the instructional load.

Bob Portillo, father of two high school-age students, takes that job so seriously that he attends class with them. One day last week he observed from the back of the classroom as his son listened to a lesson on metaphors. Then he hurried across campus to sit in on his daughter’s leadership class.

“This is our future and, if we can offer our kids the best, we don’t have to worry about who is going to take over the cotton-picking country,” he said.