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Last night at one of my daughter's dance classes, I discovered that two out of the five girls that attend the class are "homeschooled," that is, they attend an online school. However, neither choice had anything to do with quality of education. One attends because she had some sort of problems with other students at her school. Her older sister is still at the same high school that she was attending.

The other girl does online school, I am fairly certain, because her parents are very strict Jehovah's Witnesses. This girl was not allowed to dance to "Monster Mash" at the dance school during the Halloween season, so I imagine that going to public school might have been awkward for her.

I wonder if the biggest growth in learning at home is going to be these online schools. I know many people who are intensely committed to teaching their children at home, themselves, but many of the parents I see would never have the interest in doing this. And to be honest, of the many people I know who homeschool, many have children who have some sort of learning difficulty or disability. Sometimes I wonder if too many people change "homeschool is great for my kid" into "homeschool is great for every kid" far too easily.

Of course, one of the things that makes me wonder about learning at home is the level of brokenness I have seen now that my daughters are attending public school and they know so many kids. Going way beyond things like divorce, too many parents are dealing with problems in their own lives, sometimes in unhelpful ways. I was blessed enough to be able to work around my own issues, for the most part, when my kids were little, but it's not always possible. At least charter schools and online schools are getting parents to think outside of the public school box. Options are always good.