+ how ever many I can add to this

My personal experience is that public school gives you a better, well rounded experience dealing with all walks of life. That said, I was fortunate to go to a very good public school.

The thing that is not mentioned much is that in public schools the kids who were in to drugs did pot and drank. When I went to private school the kids did coke and heroine. Yikes.

Never had to worry personally since drugs just never appealed to me but with more free $$ on hand these kids did some really stupid things.

It also seemed that the rich kids parents were just using the boarding school/private school to get their kids out of the house and used the institution as a way for them to get out of parenting. There were some very messed up kids there which probably contributed to the high end drug use.

This is one of my issues with the local "good" private schools. Serious drug abuse problems - they make LAUSD look like a church social.

My step daughter has a year and a half to finish public high school, she and my wife have nice apartment half a block from school.

They are in Beaverton OR. (PDX suburb).

Daughter has a 4.0 GPA takes AP classes, involved in sports (track, soccer. Lacrosse), involved at church (going on mission trip to Brazil), takes ballet classes, has a great group of friends.

I live in Los Angeles (San Pedro) They live in OR... last year we spent around $7000 in airfare.

Yes, it is that important.

my 3 nieces were home-schooled..
they had a band & other activities..
like fieldtrips..
also had the cap & gown at the end..
nuthin like having some parent who moonlights as Dr. teach anatomy..
while HS brings vision of some cabin in the middle of nowhere..
it's not..
they grew up in Pilot Mt. NC..
smalltown USA..
it was "Maybeery" yrs ago..
it's no longer..
getting into college was no problem..
2 are Ped-ICU nurses ..the other has 2 yrs to go..

Rika

Harvard's Val last year was home schooled as a teen. The Ivy League Schools actually heavily recruit home schoolers with high SAT scores because they are disciplined and capable.

Yes, well, Miss Marks is hardly the mainline student. Following graduation she's off to the convent. She is an exception to almost every rule and excels to genius level at most of them. Hardly an example to hold up and say " see, homeschoolers can do anything." Rather I think it is Miss Marks who can do anything.

I think your Ivy League heavily recruit comment is a stretch at best. The director of admissions at Harvard says they admit 5-10 homeschooled a year. With over 9000 homeschooled in MA that is really cherry picking the crop.

There is homeschooling and there is homeschooling. Far and away the majority of homeschool programs are NOT administered by or overseen by a regional accreditation body. Most colleges will require those students who did not do the program through an accredited school to get a GED before they can be accepted into the college. GED's get into Community Colleges not Harvard as a rule.

I will acknowledge there are exceptions and many very bright deserving home schooled students at top schools. I will, however stand by my advice to any parent or student to make sure you investigate heavily and thoroughly before taking the step.

If you are eying a particular school email, phone or make an appointment. Go visit with an admissions officer there to get an idea what you might be up against. Not even superior SAT and ACT scores are a sure-thing any longer. They don't hurt though.

p.s. kill your "social network" page right this second. Period.

I moved from LAUSD area (Sylmar) serious gang territory to Santa Clarita 24 years ago. The William S. Hart (old silent movie star) school district is very, very well rated, as are the K-6 where my wife works as the Purchasing Manager and the middle school district. HS graduation rate is in the 90+% range. IIRC a few years ago three of the New Years College Bowl starting QBs were from Hart High.

I think a really good public HS is great, lots of exposure to other cultures and people. A poorly run school district allows the dominant (bully) factions to dominate. My son's regular hang around friends from HS (he's in CC now) are mostly white, but a few Hispanic and Asian friends they are all "buds".

A very good friend of mine was home schooled through 8th grade, joining our public high school as a freshman. He often refers to himself as being socially retarded due to his years of home school. I know that some home school groups have social events, but there's no replacement for the constant interaction and relationships that come from attending ANY school.

I think homeschool works for some. Just as public and private schools have bad seeds, home schoolers have a percentage of parents who have no business teaching. I don't think you should judge everyone by the bad. I think all of these options work. You have to pick which works for your family.

I think the "interaction" aspect of public education is highly overrated. How many people does anyone here still know or keep in touch with from elementary/middle/high school? Any? College even? Any?

Yeah it might help learning what molds society expects one to conform to, but I question the value of this too... Social interaction ability is not very high on the list of skills I'd consider important to either succeed or obtain a quality education. Things like proper manners, etiquette, behavior appropriate in a business context, etc. can all either be taught or learned later, when it matters. Beyond that, what's the value exactly? Nobody ever got a salary bonus for having more "friends" on facebook or for being popular... Your skill set and smarts matter, and to some extent knowing how to read people and respond to them appropriately... This is not done in a typical public school classroom setting or school/campus environment.

I can't imagine having the time and energy to do a really good job of homeschooling my kids. If I was a stay-at-home parent, maybe.

Nor do I have the knowledge to do so. Given >6 hours/day for preparation and instruction, I could teach my kids math, some history, English, French, a little art. Not Chinese, biology, chemistry, music, dance, most art, most history, or a myriad of other subjects. The kid would get my view/outlook - not a diversity of views - and my teaching approach - not a range of approaches.

Is it the best use of time? If you have access to good schools and your kid is the type who does well in a school environment, is the several hours per day required for really good homeschooling actually going to pay off in a kid who is better educated, better socialized, better prepared for college/admissions, etc? I think that's the main question to ask.

I'm not pro- or anti- home schooling. I know kids who are being home-schooled with, so far, excellent results. I personally was semi-home schooled, as a practical matter. I started high school knowing math through integral calculus, fluent in French, but no other systematic education other self-teaching through reading and various forgettable 1 and 2-year stints in a succession of random schools in different countries. It worked out fine. But that was when a so-so student could still get into UCLA and UC Berkeley (so my high school transcript of either "A"s or "F"s, plus good SAT/ACTs was sufficient) and when a modest-income family could still afford college and graduate school. I suspect things may be different today.

Home schooled our boys till 7th grade. It was a hard dcsion to put them into the public school, because our initial decision to home school was anti public education. But when I looked at private schools and the social issues that some have we felt that this was "the lesser of 2 evils". We have Friends that send their kids to private/Catholic schools and the prevailing theme amoungts these kids is a sense of entitlement. And yes sometime that is fostered by home but the exposure to that easily feeds into those young minds of mush that don't have that sense of entitlement.
Unfortunately educating kids today is a burden. But I am a firm believer that if a child has a bent towards excelling in life it doesn't matter where you send them, they will come out on top.

I pay a great deal of $$$$ to send my kids to private schools.
They get straight As and score extremely high on aptitude and skills tests.
They play sports and also get reinforcement of morals and ethics (through religion) while public schools teach the opposite.

Best money I ever spent.
Around here, public schools suck. They are run by left wing extremists who want nothing more than to suck the taxpayer's wallets dry while brainwashing their children to be good little commies.

Add to that the fact that 1/4 of the "students" in public schools in the people's republic of kaifornia can't speak fluent English and it just makes things worse.

Simple question Jeff - how does someone that rarely interacts with others, particularly strangers, learn how to interact with people? Because there's very few professions where people skills aren't important. People skills and manners aren't learned from a book, they are learned from practice.

I'm not saying to raise kids in a vacuum, I'm just saying that using "social interaction" as an excuse to either disparage home schooling or to rationalize institutionalized "education" is disingenuous at best.

The skills of appropriate behavior are easy for kids/people to learn. We have a certain amount of social nature hard-wired into us so I think it tends to come fairly natural (unless a kid really is raised in a vacuum or something). I'd think that observing human interaction just when going out or spending time with family/friends will on most cases give a kid all the skill he or she will ever need in that area - enough to build on as needed later.

Paying large sums of money doesn't mean that kids are safe and get a good education. I know of plenty of causes where kids in that situation become a drain on society. What happens in the home is what determines how a kid does in school. Its really easy to assume that big money equals big success.

The people I know that home school plan a lot of social interaction, sports, play dates, church.

Some also interact with other home schoolers on a sort of barter system, if one family is good at math they will take in kids for those classes in exchange for classes taught by another family in their expertise.

When I see the home school kids at social events you can't pick them out, they don't appear any different than the public or private school kids.

YMMV

Those are 2 different issues.

FWIW both of my kids went to public school followed by Rutgers U and Kutztown U. Both are gainfully employed and successful in their fields. My good friends kids went high zoot private school (Christian Brothers in NJ) and then high zoot college. One is marginally employed the other teaches English as a second language. Just sayin'