Homeschoolers of Color

I promise to get pictures of our trip to Six Flags (last week!) posted very soon. In the meantime, a friend dug up this article for me, and I am sharing. My decision to homeschool my kids was strongly (that’s an understatement) influenced by the way the school district was treating my biracial son. Enjoy!

Home-schoolers of color
Worried about harmful labels and lower achievement, parents choose to educate their children themselves
By Cara Bonnett, Correspondent

When Dotty Barco’s oldest son, Caleb, began to struggle with third-grade math, she remembered the statistic she’d run across while writing a college paper.

According to the National Urban League, black male achievement begins to decline as early as fourth grade. Blacks continue to fall behind through high school, in test scores, grades and dropout rates. Fewer than half of black males graduate in four years.

“In fourth grade, African-American males drop to the bottom — we can’t find them anymore,” said Barco, a former public school teacher and mother of four boys. “I knew fourth grade was coming, [and] I couldn’t have my son be a part of that.”

That year, Barco pulled all her sons out of Vance Elementary School in Raleigh. She has been home-schooling them since.

The Barcos join an increasing number of black families in the Triangle and across the country who choose to home-school their children. Of the estimated 1.1 million home-schooled children in the U.S., about 10 percent are black, according to the most recent federal statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.

Blacks are the fastest-growing demographic among home-schoolers, said Jennifer James, a Boone mother of two who in 2003 founded the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance, a nonreligious group that provides online information and support to about 3,000 home-schoolers.

Disappointed with the public school system, many black parents opt to home-school because they want more rigorous academics and a truly multicultural education, James said.

“No matter what their race, home-schooling parents really believe they can provide a stellar education for children that traditional schools can’t match,” said James, who home-schools her two daughters, ages 9 and 7. “We’re really confident in our abilities to teach our children, and we’re equally confident in our children to soak up the information.”

Many black parents say they fear their children will be labeled as disruptive in public schools and believe they can provide an educational environment better suited to their children’s learning styles.

Casie Price of Clayton knew her 6-year-old son, Kemet, wouldn’t excel in a traditional classroom. His IQ tested “off the charts,” Price said, but in a Montessori pre-K program, “he spent the whole time in timeout because he didn’t want to write the date the way the teacher wanted him to.”

At home, she said, she can provide the kinesthetic learning experiences her son needs — exploring backyard ecosystems or constructing a robot from common household materials — while also allowing her 10-year-old daughter, Elon, more time for self-expression.

“The time allotted in the public schools and the number of students doesn’t allow (much self-expression),” Price said. “She was becoming insecure (in public school). Now she’s thriving.”

Looking for role models

Nadja Bonhomme of Garner was troubled by the lack of black role models in public schools. “The ethnicity of a teacher matters a lot for boys,” said Bonhomme, who home-schooled her 13-year-old son, Anastasio, for two years. “Boys should see teachers who represent them, what they see when they look in the mirror.”

Parents also worry that their children will face troubling social pressures to fit in with negative stereotypes.

“If they’re successful academically, then people tell them they’re acting like a white person. Then they’re not doing well socially with kids of their own cultural heritage. Or they can get along well socially and not do well in school,” said Louise Omoto Kessel of Pittsboro, an adoptive mother of two black children, ages 6 and 3.

Kessel founded Homeschoolers of Color four years ago as a way to connect her children with black peers and role models. The group, which has grown to include a dozen families from as far away as Clayton, Durham and Sanford, takes weekly educational field trips.

That kind of support is crucial, because black home-schooling families can feel isolated, “like a raisin in a rice bowl,” Bonhomme said.

Those groups also can provide a resource for families who want to provide their children with a curriculum that includes more black history than just slavery and the Civil Rights movement.

Sharon Brown of Raleigh decided to design her own black history curriculum soon after co-founding the home-schooling support group HEART (Homeschool Enrichment Through Activities, Relationships and Truth) three years ago.

“We do not go by anything that already exists. We looked,” said Brown, whose four children range in age from 3 to 11. “We are doing this ourselves because it doesn’t exist.”

The first year’s lesson plan, with the theme “Coming to America,” focused on African history before the diaspora. This year, “The Road to Freedom” covered slavery and the U.S. abolitionist movement. Brown plans to design the final year’s curriculum, “Freedom,” this summer.

The 12-family group gathers twice a month for lessons, play dates and field trips, including visits to a Durham plantation and a Jamestown house that served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Barco, whose mother is Korean, said it was especially important to her to teach her sons to think critically about the histories of all ethnic groups — from the enslavement of the Israelites in the Bible to the Chinese “coolies” who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad.

“If we’re thinking we’re the only ones who have ever been enslaved, we carry a load we really don’t need to,” Barco said. “They’ll always deal with adversity. They have to know they can conquer it.”

Parents say the experience can be an education for them, too. In home-schooling her oldest son, now 11, in third and fourth grades, said Quinella Redmond of Raleigh said, “I learned more than I ever learned in school … about the contributions African-Americans have made. I was amazed.”

Facing skeptics

Still, black home-schooling families say they face skepticism — even among friends and family.

“Everyone has their eyebrows arched,” said Kamela Heyward-Rotimi of Durham, who has been home-schooling her 9-year-old son, Kola, for six years. “[Friends said] ‘You’re home-schooling? That’s for really radical white Christians in the mountains!’ We questioned right along with them, [wondering], ‘How is this going to work out?’ Well, my son did very well on the Iowa [standardized test]. Now, when people ask, ‘How is that working for you?’ I can say confidently, ‘It’s working well.’”

While public schools were a focus of the civil rights struggle, Barco said her decision has nothing to do with disregarding milestones like Brown vs. Board of Education, which led to school desegregation. It’s about finding a good fit for her family.

She can concentrate on reading with her oldest son, who is dyslexic. The entire family enjoys the looser schedule, and all the boys have more time to draw, play Pop Warner football and ride bikes outside with their friends.

Caleb, now 11, has regained his self-confidence and enjoys learning again — but he admits he’s curious about public school.