Outside, Wanting In

The Tolberts of Pinckney, in southeastern Michigan, are all very tall. It can be hard for girls to be big, which is one reason James and Denise Tolbert were happy that Kristina, their 16-year-old, 6-ft. 3-in. daughter, wanted to play basketball. But Pinckney High School won't let Kristina on the team. Like virtually all schools in the state, Pinckney has a rule that no one can play any sport unless she's enrolled. And Kristina and her brother Josh (only 14 and already 6 ft. 2 in.) are home schooled.

Now James Tolbert has sued the school system to change those rules. And other home-school advocates have taken this issue to Michigan's legislature, where it has split the Republican Party. For Tolbert, it's an issue of basic fairness: "The state should provide these [athletic] benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis," says Stephen Safranek, the lawyer behind the Tolberts and six other families. "We all pay the same taxes."

Opponents also see it as a matter of fairness--not fairness to taxpayers but to students. Officials say kids in traditional schools follow strict requirements--good attendance, decent grades--to become eligible for athletics. They say they have no way to know whether parents would lie to make their home schoolers eligible. And above all, administrators fear that home schoolers, who would parachute in for practice after a day at the house, could undermine a school's sense of community. They argue that a full-time social investment in a school is what entitles kids to play basketball.

Safranek says this argument ignores school rules, which allow enrolled students never to set foot on campus. (They can take classes at community colleges if they wish.) He suspects the rules are really motivated by bias against home schooling, and he takes offense at the notion that his clients would lie to make their kids eligible.

That home schoolers have begun a debate about the nature of a school community is a little strange. For years they simply withdrew kids from the broader community often because they felt its schools had become antireligious. They fought bitter battles for the right to change old compulsory-education laws, which have now been rewritten or reinterpreted in every state to allow home schooling. Many Americans still have an image of home schoolers as conservative ideologues at best--and weird hermits at worst.

But such images, always a stretch, are now totally outmoded. Those who study the issue say there are probably 1 million to 1.7 million home schoolers in the U.S. (more than 1% of school-age children). Whatever the precise figure, it has jumped since Columbine (North Carolina found this fall that its number of registered home schools had shot up 22% to 16,022 since April).

The home-school movement has reached beyond the odd coalition of religious conservatives and countercultural libertarians who started it. Now the top reason parents give for home schooling is dissatisfaction with public schools, where guns, drugs, and peer pressure leave them feeling vulnerable. This new generation of home-schooling families doesn't necessarily believe that public schools are unholy. And many want their children's character toughened by swim meets and coaches' whistles and Friday-night football games.