[popcornarsonist]

I was homeschooled, and there are a wide range of homeschoolers in the US. Generally it breaks down into three categories: "religious", "hippie", or "academic".

It sounds like Laura was from academic branch, where her parents were probably very engaged, and thought they could do a better job than the school system--which is great.

My parents, and most of their friends who homeschooled were from the religious branch of the movement, which is fairly large in the US. Their main motivation was to basically prevent the school system from teaching us things they didn't approve of, like evolution, etc. Of course, we learned about evolution, but from a very different (and very incorrect) perspective.

Regardless, we still took standardized tests, and performed really well on them every year. Overall I did fine in college--aside from a few academic blind spots, and I'm doing fine as a programmer today. The social stuff was a steep learning curve once I hit college, but I made it.

I will say there are a number of people I know who didn't "make it out". College can be a really big jump for a lot of these kids.

[WWLink]

When I was in high school, my school district had a homeschool program where you'd meet up with a teacher once a week and they'd give you the same tests (and general course plan) that you'd do if you were in a regular school. It was awesome! The best part was I could take the tests any time to finish a class sooner. So I did a lot of my 2 semester classes in one, and then took community college classes.

It's too bad there aren't more things like that.