教育类文章精选：THE ECONOMICS OF KARATE
9 THE ECONOMICS OF KARATE
As the number of home-schooled kids soars, districts are trying novel ways to lure them back to the fold
Largely for "spiritual reasons," Nancy Manos started home-schooling her children five years ago and has studiously avoided public schools ever since. Yet last week, she was enthusiastically enrolling her 8-year-old daughter, Olivia, in sign language and modern dance classes at Eagleridge Enrichment--a program run by the Mesa, Ariz., public schools and taught by district teachers. Manos still wants to handle the basics, but likes that Eagleridge offers the extras, "things I couldn't teach." One doubt, though, lingers in her mind: why would the public school system want to offer home-school families anything?
A big part of the answer is economics. The number of home-schooled kids nationwide has risen to as many as 1.9 million from an estimated 345,000 in 1994, and school districts that get state and local dollars per child are beginning to suffer. In Maricopa County, which includes Mesa, the number of home-schooled kids has more than doubled during that period to 7,526; at about $4,500 a child, that's nearly $34 million a year in lost revenue.
Not everyone's happy with these innovations. Some states have taken the opposite tack. Like about half the states, West Virginia refuses to allow home-schooled kids to play public-school sports. And in Arizona, some complain that their tax dollars are being used to create programs for families who, essentially, eschew participation in public life. "That makes my teeth grit,'' says Daphne Atkeson, whose 10-year-old son attends public school in Paradise Valley. Even some committed home-schoolers question the new programs, given their central irony: they turn home-schoolers into public-school students, says Bob Parsons, president of the Alaska Private and Home Educators Association. "We've lost about one third o