Originally posted by Aristotle
That doesn't mean everyone should home school. But it does mean that throwing more money at the public school system, or making kids spend more time at school, or giving them more homework, are definitely NOT the answer.
I don't see how you draw the conclusion about money from the comparison of cost of home schooling to public schooling. Comparing the two is comparing apples and oranges.

The apple will be home schooling. It is cheaper and gets better results. That is obvious, but the reason isn't because less money is spent. I think the reason it is better is because there is a lower student to teacher ratio. This allows the teach to tailor the education style to the student(s) and the teacher can give very focused attention and get results. This is all done with little to no overhead, so the costs are very low. It is an awesome way to educate your kids!

The orange is the public school system. It is more expensive and requires heavy parental involvement to get good results. There will typically be 20-30 students per teacher, and there is the overhead of administration, transportation, food, and electricity to add on top of the teacher salary.

Just because the apple is cheaper and better doesn't mean that spending more money to grow better oranges is wrong. I do, however, agree that throwing money at a problem will not make it go away. I have no doubt that tons of money is wasted on administration and inefficiency in public schools. We could definitely get more bang for the buck out of public schools, but that is an independent issue from how much it costs to home school.

My wife considered home schooling our children, but we decided to send them to public school. In our opinion we are still responsible for the education of our children, the public school system is just a tool for us to use. Mostly because we’re fortunate to have a very good elementary school despite most of the kids coming from low income families.