This article on The Greenville News’ site points to the economy as a reasons for an increasing number of families choosing to homeschool.

With 345 students enrolled this school year, the Upstate Homeschool Co-op has seen its numbers swell dramatically since it first began as a small study group in Suzanne Brown’s Taylors home for her three oldest children.

Now, the co-op, which meets twice a week at Taylors First Baptist Church and offers enrichment and academic classes to students 4K-12, is seeing longer waiting lists and has doubled its high school courses to meet a growing demand as the economic recession continues to tighten household finances and more parents become dissatisfied with public school education.

Yet, Suzanne Brown points to a less headline catching reason for homeschooling, and one that isn’t driven by outside forces.

In the last several years, Brown has met parents who never thought they would homeschool say it’s the only avenue they have because the traditional classroom setting isn’t working for their children.

“There’s no way that one teacher in the classroom can meet the needs of 26 kids who have such a huge variety of needs and learning styles. It just can’t be done. It’s a broken system,” Brown said.

While charter schools, fine arts schools and single-gender education in public schools are now becoming available, Brown said these options need to be more readily available to parents. Until South Carolina can provide more choices and “figure out how to get outside the box and the one size fits all,” she believes more parents are going to homeschool.

With homechooling increasingly being included in the smorgasbord of ‘school’ choices both the current push of educational reform and the natural tendency will be to herd us back into that box.

Economy drives more parents to homeschool