Home Schooling: In preparation for a K-12 education panel I will participate in, I was looking for some help to understand home-schooling in the Bay Area of Northern California (Silicon Valley)….   Marlene Turner, Associate Dean College of Business at San Jose State University helped by providing me with some perspective and then some pointers: “Getting a read on homeschooling is interesting because homeschooling comes in many flavors and varieties, ranging from classical education to religion-centered approaches to gifted education to “unschooling.”   I’ve listed some web sites that may provide useful overviews.

(1) Homeschool Association of California – a major association of homeschoolers that sponsors an annual conference; the “Getting Started” section of the web site may be helpful:  http://www.hsc.org/home.php

(2) A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling:  very popular website with a variety of information about homeschooling methods, curricula, age-related issues; developed by Ann Zeise, homeschooler in Milpitas:  http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/index.htm

(3) National Center for Education Statistics:  DOE site tracking education trends; has information about participation in homeschooling:  http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/section1/indicator06.asp

(4) Wes Beach:  Located in Santa Cruz, Wes is a nationally recognized authority on homeschooling and self-directed learning; his web site only gives a brief overview of his perspective but it may be instructive:  http://www2.cruzio.com/~beachhi/home.html

(5) Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth:  one of the first distance learning programs for elementary and high school students; recently started an online high school:  http://epgy.stanford.edu/”

Very helpful perspective and pointers indeed.