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>and yet homeschoolers spend vastly less in comparison to public and private schools (Finding a public source for spending that I am comfortable with is a littl

>and yet homeschoolers spend vastly less in comparison to public and private schools (Finding a public source for spending that I am comfortable with is a little hard, so I am basing this on what I know of spending in my local homeschool groups. The test score comparisons are fairly easy to find.). That seems...off. I would actually appreciate a source there because I just did some back of the napkin math. If you are homeschooling a kid, how much time are you spending with them doing that? If you pull that together in terms of opportunity cost, I would think it would amount to more than $12,500, which seems from your source to be the average spend per pupil. Let's say you home school 4 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 9 months a year. That's 20 hours a week, around 720 hours total. The average American makes around $18 an hour, so that's around $13,000 a year.

lax4ever 5y ago
That would seem reasonable, except we are not talking about opportunity cost. We are talking about actual financial burden comparison. I can educate both my children to a higher standard in a far more personalized education form for less than $5,000 per child per year in actual financial cost. This includes progressive curriculum materials, paid external learning opportunities (things like park/nature center passes, museums, group activities, etc.), travel costs (yes, we actually do a far amount of local and some longer travel in the course of their school year for education purposes), and school supplies. Opportunity cost tends to be more subjective and harder to realize because the success of opportunity is hard to predict. Does that mean I live in a single-income household? Yes, but my spouse and I chose this because we wanted to give our children as good an opportunity to succeed as we can and this was the way we were determined to do it. My spouse is actually has a higher education level than I do but chose to stay home and do this for our children. My spouse doesn't see this as the loss of opportunity but the gain of ability to spend more time with our children helping them learn and grow into compassionate, driven, and hard-working individuals. The fact that we can do so for less actual cost than the public or private school systems is just a bonus. (I do realize this is anecdotal, but it is the best source I have right now and other homeschool parents in my area say much the same regardless of ethnic or economic background.)
- ameister14 5y ago
  >Opportunity cost tends to be more subjective and harder to realize because the success of opportunity is hard to predict. Sure - in an effort to limit that I chose $18 per hour as a wage, which is lower than the median individual wage in the US ($22). It's a pretty conservative estimate of lost income. If you didn't want to add that in I would say remove all salaries from the cost of education, generally, and then compare the cost per pupil. So you're comparing like to like - mostly just the cost of supplies, facilities and educational trips. Your pluses are great, I'm not taking away from that, but they are at least somewhat represented in the increase in overall score, no?

lax4ever 5y ago

That would seem reasonable, except we are not talking about opportunity cost. We are talking about actual financial burden comparison. I can educate both my children to a higher standard in a far more personalized education form for less than $5,000 per child per year in actual financial cost. This includes progressive curriculum materials, paid external learning opportunities (things like park/nature center passes, museums, group activities, etc.), travel costs (yes, we actually do a far amount of local and some longer travel in the course of their school year for education purposes), and school supplies. Opportunity cost tends to be more subjective and harder to realize because the success of opportunity is hard to predict. Does that mean I live in a single-income household? Yes, but my spouse and I chose this because we wanted to give our children as good an opportunity to succeed as we can and this was the way we were determined to do it. My spouse is actually has a higher education level than I do but chose to stay home and do this for our children. My spouse doesn't see this as the loss of opportunity but the gain of ability to spend more time with our children helping them learn and grow into compassionate, driven, and hard-working individuals. The fact that we can do so for less actual cost than the public or private school systems is just a bonus. (I do realize this is anecdotal, but it is the best source I have right now and other homeschool parents in my area say much the same regardless of ethnic or economic background.)

ameister14 5y ago
>Opportunity cost tends to be more subjective and harder to realize because the success of opportunity is hard to predict. Sure - in an effort to limit that I chose $18 per hour as a wage, which is lower than the median individual wage in the US ($22). It's a pretty conservative estimate of lost income. If you didn't want to add that in I would say remove all salaries from the cost of education, generally, and then compare the cost per pupil. So you're comparing like to like - mostly just the cost of supplies, facilities and educational trips. Your pluses are great, I'm not taking away from that, but they are at least somewhat represented in the increase in overall score, no?