Quoted Text

...One of the frequently voiced complaints against home-schooling by the educational establishment has been that it "drains resources" from public schools. You see, each district receives funds based on the number of pupils enrolled there, so fewer pupils equals less money, according to this concept.

...What Mr. Wenders and Miss Clements found (in Homeschooling in Nevada: The Budgetary Impact), however, was that home-schoolers save the state of Nevada between $24 million and $34 million per year, decreasing schools' expenses far more than the decrease in revenues, thus creating a net gain for the school districts.

In addition to dispelling the myth that home-schoolers — who pay taxes for schools that they don't use — are somehow costing schools money, the authors cite studies by other researchers that show the value of home-schooling in other areas: home-schoolers have higher self-esteem, fewer behavior disorders, better academic performance, and more college attendance than their peers in public and private schools.

A similar study by the North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education found that students educated at home or in private schools saved North Carolina taxpayers $1.3 billion in 2006-2007. Private school students there numbered 98,000, but home-schoolers were a healthy 70,000 — about 42 percent of the students not in public school. The savings created by North Carolina home-schoolers alone totals about $546 million in a school year.