Home Schooling Becoming More Mainstream

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is telling us that Home schooling is becoming more widespread. In the past, the stereotypical home schooling situation consisted of families with ultra-conservative morals or religious viewpoints.

According to the article, more parents are choosing to home school because they feel that the public school system is failing to serve the needs of their children.

According to a study by the United States Department Of Education, the reasons why parents choose to home school their children are:

• 31 percent because of concerns about the environment found with schools
• 30 percent cited a need to give their children religious or moral instruction
• 16 percent dissatisfied with the academic instruction offered by schools
• 9 percent stated reasons such as family unity and individualized instruction
• 7 percent indicated physical or mental health concerns of the child
• 7 percent said that their child had some other special need

Clearly, home schooling is becoming more and more popular, across a broad spectrum of America. People are choosing to home school in order to give their kids something that the public school system can't (or won't) provide.

We here at the 'Wonks know that it is currently fashionable to use terms from the "business world" when referring to educational issues, so that is what we will do.

In cases where the underlying cause of customer dissatisfaction with our product is religious in nature (about 1 in 3) it may not be possible to sufficiently modify the system to attract those particular customers.

Almost half of customers that do not choose to use our product are unhappy with the product's quality.

When seeking solutions as to how to improve market share, the question that the Educational Industry should be asking itself is this:

Why are so many of our customers rejecting our product and choosing to look elsewhere?