Homeschooled Students Make the Grade at BU

It's an increasingly popular alternative to public and private education across the country, but homeschooling still isn't exactly mainstream. Four BU students talk about their experiences, and the lessons they learned.

by Cynthia K. Buccini

Emily Murphy (GRS'06) in the Peabody Essex Museum's Phillips Library. Photograph by Frank Curran

As a gifted first grader at a Catholic school in Havertown, Pennsylvania, Emily Murphy took reading and language classes with second graders before rejoining her classmates for math. She didn't feel at home in either place. "They kept pushing me places and not explaining why I had a different workbook than the other kids," says Murphy, now a student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "I thought it was because I was dumb." Her problems didn't end there. Criticized about her penmanship, she eventually stopped writing, refusing even to print her own name.

With fourth grade approaching and the family about to move to Connecticut, her parents decided on a relatively new alternative to public and private education: homeschooling. "I was ready to try something," says Murphy. "I figured, what the heck." She never returned to regular schools.

Today, Murphy is a Ph.D. candidate in the American and New England Studies Program, a park ranger for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, an intern in the American Decorative Arts Department at the Peabody Essex Museum, and a published author. She is among a tiny percentage of BU students who were educated at home for all or part of their precollege years. They tend to be bright — past homeschoolers have been Trustee Scholars and students in The University Professors program, and their average SAT scores and GPAs are higher than their peers'. And they seem to defy the notion that homeschooled students, learning in isolation, fail to acquire the social skills necessary to succeed in college.

"The conventional wisdom about homeschooling is that it's something people do privately, in their homes with the doors locked and the window shades drawn," says Mitchell Stevens, an associate professor of educational sociology at New York University and author of Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement. "But in fact, homeschooling makes it possible for parents and their children to enter the wider community in much more flexible ways. Virtually every homeschooler you meet will give you evidence of exploiting that larger world beyond the conventional classroom. That's why you get the talent that brings kids through the doors of Boston University and Swarthmore and NYU."

	David Aron (CAS'05) Photograph by Kalman Zabarsky

A Popular Alternative

The foundation for the modern homeschooling movement was laid in the 1970s by conservative Christians and educational radicals critical of traditional schooling, according to Stevens. "In the 1980s, it became a national phenomenon, in large measure through the organizational sophistication of the religious right," he says. "And by the 1990s, homeschooling was 'normalized.' It had become a legitimate if unconventional educational choice."

Homeschooling is now legal in every state. In 1999, approximately 850,000 children between five and seventeen — 1.7 percent of students in the United States -- were being educated at home, according to the latest figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. (Homeschooling advocates put the number at more than 1.5 million for the 2000-2001 school year.)

Parents choose to homeschool for academic, family, and religious reasons: they object to what the schools teach, they believe they can give their children a better education at home, or they think regular schools offer a poor learning environment or fail to challenge their kids. They have ruled out private schools for similar reasons, or because the schools are too expensive or too far away. Teaching styles are as varied as the homeschooling families. Some purchase entire curricula, religious or secular, packaged by grade, with lesson plans, textbooks, workbooks, maps, and other supplies. Others cobble together courses using educational materials from scores of companies that cater to homeschoolers. (In 2002, Education Week estimated that homeschooling parents spend about $700 million a year on instructional materials.) And some can send their children to local public schools to attend a class or participate in extracurricular activities.

The homeschooling movement has become so popular that families can subscribe to specialty magazines, join support groups, and if they still have questions, pick up a variety of books on the subject, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling. And they don't have to miss out on the pomp when students complete their studies — there are special diplomas, class rings, and caps and gowns for home graduation ceremonies.

Although their numbers are small, more homeschoolers are applying to Boston University, says Kelly Walter, director of admissions, whose office has a staff member who reviews homeschool applications. Of about 29,300 applicants for fall 2003, Walter says, twenty identified themselves as homeschooled, up from two in 1994. The University admitted eleven, and two enrolled. The previous year, eighteen homeschooled students applied, twelve were admitted, and four enrolled. But the numbers don't tell the whole story. "There are certainly more than twenty students," Walter says, "but these are the ones who self-identified this past year."

Homeschooled students, expected to meet the same admissions standards as their peers, must submit letters of recommendation; writing samples, such as research papers or essays; some type of record of their academic history, such as a list of disciplines studied and the names of textbooks used; and SAT or ACT scores. Last year, says Walter, homeschooled applicants had an average combined SAT score of 1299, compared to 1255 for the entire pool. They tend to do well once they settle in, with GPAs averaging well above 3.0. "They know how to study, but remember, they also are academically admissible," she says. "These are not weak students. They're competitive, and we would expect them to be successful."

Stevens agrees that their success is no surprise. "If you think about it, the kinds of skills that are valued in college — the ability to work independently, to generate one's own ideas, to follow through on complex tasks over long periods of time — are the things that homeschooling encourages." These students also are well prepared to interact with adults and students of different ages and backgrounds, he says. "They've spent a lot of time building relationships with people who are quite different from them in terms of age or life experience. I think that serves them well, even on the most rigorous campuses."

Dwight Biddle (CAS'06) Photograph by Vernon Doucette

Not Hippies

In 1998, Emily Murphy was featured in a New York Times article about the first generation of children to come through the modern homeschooling movement. It wasn't the first time she and her family had drawn media interest, nor the last. "We didn't try to buck the system by dropping out, and I think that's one of the reasons that pretty early on we became one of the poster families for mainstream homeschooling — people who were doing it because they felt the school districts were not going to fulfill their children's requirements," she says. "We were the folks they'd pull out and say, 'Look, they're not communist hippies,' or 'They're not stockpiling guns in Montana.'"

Despite the Murphys' success — two younger siblings were homeschooled as well — the going wasn't always easy. "It took a lot of self-discipline and organization," Murphy says. "There were a lot of personality conflicts. You've got five people in the household who are all very bright, very outgoing, and willing to defend their ideas. My mom's a saint."

They began each year by reviewing the state curriculum guidelines, and each week Murphy and her parents set goals for how many chapters to read, lessons to complete, or reports to write. In the beginning, she worked at her desk, her mother closely monitoring her progress and occasionally "cracking the whip over our heads," she says. Her parents often assigned essays and regularly administered the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. But Murphy's education went beyond textbooks and tests. She frequented museums and science centers and tuned in to the PBS science program NOVA. She kept bees for years. By high school, the family was back in Pennsylvania, and Murphy was studying on her own, taking drama classes, volunteering at the Mercer Museum in Bucks County, and working at a local library. She took biology, physics, Shakespeare, and other classes for gifted high school students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania. At the end of every academic year, she compiled a portfolio of essays, reports, test scores, and museum brochures.

Murphy says she had no trouble fitting in when she started as a freshman at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. "St. John's pulls from the two people in high school who prefer reading over going to sporting events," she says. The year after graduation, she proposed a book on the history of the college and was hired to write it. A Complete and Generous Education: 300 Years of Liberal Arts was published in 1996. Murphy was curator of photographs at the Maryland State Archives for four years and then earned her master's at Penn State.

At BU, she is studying late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American culture. She passed her oral exams in October and is conducting research for her dissertation on the merchants of Salem, Massachusetts, between the Revolutionary War and the early Federal period, when trade with the East Indies was booming. "I love it," she says. "Even when I hate it, I'm loving it."

She remains a fan of homeschooling, which instilled "a flexibility of thinking" and a discipline that helps her meet deadlines. She learned to see adults as resources, not simply authority figures. "Every time we had an electrician or a plumber come to the house, my mom would ask, 'Do you mind if the kids watch and ask questions?' One guy took apart a light switch to show us how it worked. We loved it." And she continues to draw on old habits in juggling graduate school and work. "I still sit down and map out what's coming up in the week," she says. "I usually have three calendars running at once."

There was a point when Murphy wondered what she was missing by learning at home. For the last third of ninth grade, she attended a small private school. But she missed the flexibility of homeschooling — the ability to volunteer two mornings a week or get to a museum before busloads of children arrived. "There were times when my parents were ready to give up on me and send me to school, get me out of the house," she says. "I was a truly obnoxious teenager. I was angry. I was resentful — typical teenager stuff, with the additional I'm-so-sick-of-everything-being-turned-into-a-learning-experience sort of thing. But once I got into college, I realized how incredibly intelligent my parents are. And, yeah, we've turned out okay."

	Stacey Hughes (COM'05) Photograph by Kalman Zabarsky

Museum trips and new pals

One of the biggest disadvantages of being a homeschooler, says David Aron (CAS'05), is the constant need to refute the common stereotypes. "I don't mind telling people about it," he says. "But people would say, 'Oh, you learned in your kitchen; did your mother wear a hairnet when she was serving you lunch?' or 'You didn't have any friends,' or 'You're weird.' It wasn't intended as hurtful. You know, I'm no different from anyone else."

Aron, a native of West Hartford, Connecticut, was labeled gifted in elementary school. His parents decided to teach him at home after seventh grade, in part because he wasn't being challenged in class. "They said, 'Let's just try it out for a year; we'll see how it works,'" he says. He was homeschooled through high school.

His education was a mix of desk work, class work, independent study, and field trips to Dinosaur State Park or Boston's Museum of Science, for example. He took Spanish courses through a language instruction company and later, classes through the American School program. When he needed sophisticated chemistry equipment, he borrowed it from the local high school. At first, Aron says, he missed his old friends. But by the second year, he'd found new pals in other homeschoolers. He organized a recreation group and participated in an orchestra, both made up of homeschoolers. By the time he took AP tests and SATs (he had a combined score of 1380), Aron had a diploma from the American School and a solid college application. He was accepted at BU, NYU, Rutgers, Brandeis, and SUNY Binghamton.

Aron doesn't think his education suffered from lack of the resources available to more traditional students, such as computer and science labs. In fact, he says, homeschooling fostered his curiosity and desire to learn. "Anything I missed out on was made up for tenfold in other areas, like the ability to pursue things I was interested in. I know I would not have been able to take college courses, for one," he says of the trigonometry, European history, biology, and economics classes he took at the University of Hartford, St. Joseph's College, and Trinity College. "I had a year's worth of college before I came to BU. I think that was helpful when I applied and when I came to BU. I wasn't all freaked out that I had to take a college course. I already knew what it would be like."

At his home graduation ceremony, Aron's father told him his homeschooling set him apart from other students. "Think of the student as a vase," he said. "Our high school is churning out these mass-produced vases. They're nice to put on your coffee table, but they're not very original, whereas our homeschool puts out only one every few years, and it's hand-painted. It's original."

Once he arrived at BU, Aron, a political science major, faced the same challenges all freshmen do — meeting new people, trying to find his place on a large urban campus. Getting involved with Hillel and his residence hall association helped. He finished his first year with a GPA of 3.6. Now he's thinking about pursuing a city planning degree in graduate school, and harboring loftier ambitions. "I definitely want to be governor of Connecticut," he says.

A lot of reading

When Dwight Biddle (CAS'06) was six years old, his parents asked him if he wanted to go to school. He didn't. "I had a terrible time in preschool," he explains. "I don't know why . . . but I remember absolutely hating it, and my parents say I really hated it. They said, 'If you don't want to go back to school, then we understand.'"

Biddle's experience is a stark contrast to that of Murphy and Aron. Homeschooled until eighth grade, he describes unstructured days reading action-adventure and other stories. "We never really got any textbooks," he says. "I just read a lot of books." Besides being drilled in math by his grandfather, he says, "I remember it as totally learning on my own. And I guess I did pretty well."

Biddle grew up in Natural Bridge Station, Virginia, about an hour north of Roanoke. There weren't a lot of educational opportunities nearby. "There was our house, then a cow field, and then another house a half-mile away," he says. "There was nothing there." In the sixth grade, he attended an unaccredited school with other homeschooled students, whose parents taught subjects in which they were proficient.

Each year, Biddle's parents asked him if he wanted to go to public school, and each time he said no. "They were cool like that, which is why I didn't mind staying home," he says. "I really get along with my parents." But by the time he was ready for eighth grade, Biddle began to rethink his decision. "I was getting to the age where I didn't want to be all alone anymore," he says. "I wanted to be able to meet people." He also thought it would be easier to get into college if he had a high school diploma.

The transition was more difficult than he'd expected. "Looking back, it might have been nice to be in school," he says, "because when I came in, I was a wreck. I didn't have any social skills." But he adjusted, and by the time he got to high school, he was doing well. He left with a 3.75 grade point average and a combined SAT score of 1380. He took a year off before entering BU as a computer science major. This year, besides computer science, he's taking Greek civilization, Spanish, and linear algebra. "I think I did better academically because I was homeschooled," he says. "Just reading a lot helped."

A chance to sleep

At her elementary school in Chestertown, Maryland, Stacey Hughes (COM'05) was a gifted pupil and a competitive gymnast with a punishing schedule. "I was leaving school early to go to the gym," she recalls, "working out for two and a half hours every night, spending an hour being driven home from the gym, doing homework in the car or getting up early to do it before class. I would spend entire Saturdays and Sundays in another part of the state at competitions. It was so stressful for me, especially because I was only eight or nine years old." She and her parents decided that homeschooling made sense; she could complete her classwork, continue to compete, and still get some sleep.

Hughes, who was homeschooled in grades seven and eight, says her parents trusted her to work independently. For the most part, her study was self-directed. But when her mother learned she had skipped about sixty math lessons that first year, she issued an ultimatum: finish the work by the end of the week or go back to school. "That was the threatened punishment," Hughes says, "and it was enough to make me shape up."

She always intended to go to public high school because she wanted to take a variety of classes, enjoy proms, and participate in student government, drama, and sports. Plus, by the time she was a high school freshman, she'd given up gymnastics. "I remember having nightmares leading up to the first day of high school, about wandering down these halls with lockers and not being able to find my room and being late for class and not knowing anything. But once I got there, there were a lot of familiar faces." She graduated with straight As, 9th in a class of about 180 students, and was accepted under BU's early decision program.

A print journalism major with an English minor, Hughes says her homeschooling and competition days taught her to manage her time, stay organized, and set goals. As a result, she's never felt lost at BU. "I can't not do something," she says. "I physically and mentally cannot just disregard something. I have to finish on time. I have to turn in a paper on time."

More important, she says, homeschooling instilled a desire to learn. "In my first class at BU, I had to write a ten- or fifteen-page paper, and I was terrified because I had never been taught how to do that. But sitting down with a pile of books and wanting to figure something out was exciting. I don't think that can be taught. But it can be fostered in one way or another, and I think homeschooling really helps develop that. It taught me to learn for myself more than anything else. I think I'll be a perpetual student. And I think I'll never be bored where I am because there's always so much more to learn."

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