Expanding the horizon for home-school students

Advocates cite wider range of shared outside activities as helping fuel growth of practice once relegated to fringe

Ben Shapiro, 8, practices a piano piece for an audience of fellow home-school students rehearsing for a holiday show at St. George Church in Framingham. (Globe Staff Photo / Bill Polo)

Eight-year-old Ben Shapiro's days are a blur of gymnastics, piano playing, and art history lessons. He can also be found doing fractions, reading a biography of Marco Polo, and, soon, delving into physics. But he's not at school. And he's not alone.

He is part of a fast-evolving home-school movement that is traveling away from the stereotype of child and parent at the kitchen table. Shapiro does spend most of his day with his mother, but not alone. Instead, she shuttles him from one group activity to another.

The home is no longer where all the action is in this new wave of home schooling. Although some instruction takes place at home, parents now choose from an increasing number of options that allow their children to interact with and learn alongside other home-schooled peers. The opportunities for socialization are numerous - swim lessons at the YMCA, staging a play with like-minded friends found over the Internet, or any of myriad academic courses offered at cooperative schools in the area.

"It all can be subcontracted," said Marcia Coakley, who teaches her 14-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter at home in Medway. "There's so many resources out there, it's almost hard to decide."

As the number of home-school students has risen, so too have the networking and group opportunities, which has helped pull the practice closer to the mainstream, according to Jack Klenk, director of the Office of Non-Public Education at the US Department of Education.

"It is so much more common than it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago or even three years ago for people to know some one who is home-schooling," said Klenk, whose daughter home-schools one of her children. "Home schooling is much more of a community and social enterprise than the stereotype about home schooling held some years ago. There used to be a lot of talk about home-schoolers not being socialized."

Not so much anymore. Home-schoolers are competing in athletic leagues against each other and even gathering in spaces that look a lot like classrooms to participate in courses taught by certified teachers, he said.

"I call it the hybridization of education," Klenk said.

A report by the National Center for Education Statistics estimated that the number of home-schooled children rose from 850,000 in 1999 to 1.1 million in 2003.

In Massachusetts, there's been a boom in programs that offer group lessons to home-schooled children. Acton-based Voyagers Inc., a nonprofit teaching co-op designed for home-schoolers, has grown since it was established in 1999 to include more than 80 families. Parents teach each other's children in a range of subjects, including Latin, drawing and AP chemistry, according to Margie Pertchik, chairman of the Voyagers board.

The Family Resource Center of New England, based in Salem (frc.info), offers 600 programs annually around the region in subjects that include geometry, engineering, music, and physical education.

Statistics on home schooling are usually estimated, because most states don't require formal reporting. Only Massachusetts and Rhode Island require approval, according to Bill Heuer, treasurer and executive board member for the 20-year-old Massachusetts Home Learning Association. Parents have to submit plans and progress reports to their local school district, so numbers are available from individual districts, but the state does not keep totals.

Heuer, who lives in Holliston and home-schooled his children years ago, said his group estimates there are between 10,000 and 20,000 home-schoolers in the state, and the numbers are growing. He pointed to an increasing number of parents who are pulling their children out of public school. Around the state, about 1,000 children switched in the last year.

"Twenty years ago, the public impression of home-schoolers was that they were strange, odd, weird, whatever word you want to use," said Heuer. "I think people feel a lot more confident, there's a lot more support groups, there's a lot more opportunities now."

The birth of home schooling can be traced to the 1960s and places like Cambridge, where the practice was based in secular and liberal ideals, Klenk said. While some conservative Christians keep their children home to transfer religion-based values, he said, slightly more people cite the public school environment and safety as reasons for shifting to a home-schooling arrangement, according to the 2003 report. Although there are Christian home-schoolers in Massachusetts, and organizations that serve them, most of the parents interviewed locally cited other reasons for avoiding traditional schools.

Marlborough mother Robyn Ripley just started teaching her 7-year-old daughter at home this year. She said she decided to make the switch because her daughter came out of first grade in public school feeling she wasn't a good reader and couldn't do math. Ripley said her daughter needed a little more one-on-one interaction with the teacher, but was shy about asking for extra help.

The transition was a little rocky at first, she said, but now the two have settled into a routine that includes math and reading in the morning at home, followed by a wide range of outside activities. That might mean going to one of the programs for home-schoolers offered at the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History in Weston, where children learn in small groups about history, math, or geography using stamps. Or, mother and daughter might go on one of the field trips organized through the Family Resource Center. Three days a week, Ripley's daughter attends karate classes.

Anecdotal evidence suggests a growing awareness of the home-schooled population. For example, the YMCA increased its programs in Massachusetts for home-schoolers 53 percent between 2002 and 2006, according to Leah Pouw, spokeswoman for the national YMCA organization. Across the country, such programs increased 64 percent over the same period, she said. The Family Resource Center has grown from serving about 60,000 New England home-schoolers in 2005 to about 80,000 today, according to Tammy Rosenblatt, the company's executive director.

In addition to the athletic, artistic, and academic offerings available through established organizations, there are also countless informal groups such as the one Ben Shapiro attends, called MetroWest Homeschoolers. He and more than a dozen children gathered on a recent weekday morning to practice Bach, Handel, and Beethoven pieces on their violins and keyboards.

His mother, Penny Wayne-Shapiro, a musician and violin teacher, organized the rehearsal. Turning the old concern on its head, Wayne-Shapiro said her son, outgoing and exuberant even in a brief meeting, is getting more social opportunities, especially with adults, than he would in a traditional school.

"When we're out, people will talk to him and he'll say something about being home-schooled, and they always turn to me and say, 'What about socialization?' " according to Wayne-Shapiro. "And I nod and say, 'Yeah. I think that's one of the greatest advantages.' "

Lisa Kocian can be reached at lkocian@globe.com or 508- 820-4231.