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<p>Well, yes, there are those. But then there are those who homeschool their kids precisely because their local public schools don’t offer a sufficiently rigorous curriculum, including math/science. I know one homeschooler here in Minnesota who as a HS junior is taking advanced graduate-level math classes at our local public flagship. His parents pulled him out of the public schools because he was so far ahead of anything the public schools could offer in math that he was dying of boredom and intellectually wasting away. The math department at the U placed him into graduate level courses because he’d already burned through the undergrad math curriculum through self-study as a homeschooler. </p>
<p>There are many ways to homeschool; they don’t all involve the parents doing all the teaching. For subjects the parents are ill-prepared to reach, some homeschooling families hire tutors, some organize cooperatives that pool the expertise of parents and/or hire qualified professionals, some employ on-line “distance-learning” classes (including some offered by leading universities), some take certain classes (often, but not exclusively, math & lab sciences) “a la carte” from local high schools, community colleges, or as here in Minnesota 4-year colleges and universities under a program in which the state pays for qualifying HS juniors and seniors to take college classes. </p>
<p>Bottom line, while some homeschoolers don’t get rigorous math and science, other homeschoolers are among the very best-prepared for college in these subjects. So I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “home schooled children are most deficient in math and science.” Some are, some aren’t; the highly selective colleges are aware of that, and for many demonstrated math/science proficiency is an important admissions criterion for homeschoolers. On the other hand, a tragically large number of kids coming out of the public schools are deficient in these subjects as well; the adcoms are also well aware of that, and it’s an important admissions criterion with this group as well. The only difference is that among conventionally schooled kids it only takes a quick glance at math/science grades and SAT Math test scores to weed out the deficient. For homeschoolers it may be a bit more complicated to make that assessment, depending on what kinds of evidence they bring to the table.</p>