Home Schooling - Essay Example

The number of home school students has increased over the past decade in the United States of America. In 2007, there were approximately 1.5 million children in the US who were homeschooled. This makes up approximately 2.9% of the total school-going population. In 1999, around 850,000 children were homeschooled (NCES, 2009). The increasing popularity of home schools is obvious in the increasing number of homeschooled students over a span of these 8 years. The recent increase in the number of homeschooled children has brought a lot of attention to the topic and has opened up avenues for new research (Murphy, 2012). In addition to this topic being of interest from a researcher’s point of view, it also represents a social issue. Are home school laws being followed in households? What kind of homeschooling laws are in place to ensure that these children get the best possible education? Do these laws need any changes or amendments? These questions are the basis of this research paper. The homeschooling laws across all the states in the USA need to be uniform, thus they need to be reviewed on a national level and implemented (Sykes, Schneider, & Plank, 2012).

This research will explore the topic “Should Regulations for Home Schools Be Changed?” The research is going to be organized as follows. The literature review will examine the homeschooling laws which are already in place in the country. As mentioned before, these laws differ across different states. Thus, the major states of the country will be covered and the laws will be examined. In addition, this section will review previous research or papers written on the prevailing homeschooling laws and regulations in the United States. The “Methodology” will explain how effective and satisfactory the regulations regarding home schools are through qualitative data collection. Questionnaires will be distributed to parents of home-schooled children and those children themselves. “Results” will give the findings of the research. “Conclusion and Recommendations” will then analyze the results and discuss possible ways of making amendments to the home school regulations so that the entire system can benefit (Denicolo & Becker, 2012).

The research is going to be useful for the parents of home-schooled children. It will help them understand the dynamics of the homeschooling system and how it can be improved by making the required changes in the regulations so that their child gets the best possible education. The audience for this research is not only these parents but also policy makers. Government officials are the ones who devise these policies to begin with. These people have official positions in the government; they have the required decision making authority so as to make sure that the suggested changes are pondered upon, if not actually implemented. The officials responsible for the education sector already have a view on the topic. They are aware of the dynamics of this sector and how home schools work. This research, however, will provide them with a fresh point of view and probably a new angle of looking at how things are being run in this sector (Saliger, 2010).

The research on the whole will encompass ways in which the regulations can be amended in a way so that home schools across the country will benefit from it. The research does not aim at changing the entire system of home education. It just aims at analyzing the existing laws and gaining public opinion about the effectiveness of those laws. The research aims at finding out the extent to which these laws are being implemented in the country, and in cases where they are not, the research aims to find out the possible reasons for it. Are the laws too difficult to adhere to? Are they impractical? Are parents just being ignorant of their child’s education needs? (Imber & Geel, 2004) These are some additional questions which will be addressed by the research.

This research will shed some light on the problems in the home education system and will help suggest what steps can be taken to overcome those problems and improve the system. With the increasing number of children being schooled at home nowadays, such a research would be of great use not only to the parents but also to the policy making officials.