Home Schooling

More on Blacks and home schooling:

Researchers say 1.1 million to 2.4 million children are taught at home nationwide. While data on home-schooled students are spotty, experts say that blacks are one of the fastest-growing sectors of that population. Brian Ray, the president of the National Home Education Research Institute, estimated that black children make up about 6 percent of that pool based on data from his own organization, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics.

"Up until a few years ago, a dark-skinned face in the audience was almost unheard of" at a home-schooling conference, Ray said. "Now there's an obvious, obvious, obvious change. In some local or regional conferences, the majority of the audience is African-American or Hispanic."

Spence said that at least once a month she is approached by black strangers when she's out with her children in the middle of the day. "First they say, 'Oh my gosh, you're home-schooling,'" Spence said, "and the next minute they're asking for my number."

Word has trickled out slowly in the black community, said Maisha Khalfani, who turned to home schooling after reading Jawanza Kunjufu's Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys while pregnant with her son. The stereotype that only whites home-school persists, she said, and some black parents face pressure not to desert community schools.

"Historically, because of the struggles black people had in this country - Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights - there is this idea that going to public school is very much a privilege that we didn't have before," said Khalfani, whose children recently returned to public schools after the family moved to Baltimore County. "It's considered a no-no to pull your kids out."

Black parents tempted to home-school also frequently hear pleas not to leave because they're exactly the kind of proactive parents schools need.

But that hasn't stemmed the tide.

"I don't have one ounce of guilt. Not one," said Jennifer James, founder of the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance in North Carolina. In public school, "the black students do worse than any other students in the state. ... I could stay around and help with something largely irreparable or go a different route."

The article features quotes from Shawn Spence, who I'm thinking is the wife of Lester Spence.