An increasing number of black families nationwide are choosing to home-school their children as they become fed up with what they call the country's "inadequate" public school system.Blacks now make up nearly 5 percent of the estimated 1.7 million children who were home-schooled last year, according to estimates by the National Home Educators Research Institute in Oregon, a non-profit organization devoted to research on home-based education.
That's about 85,000 black children — almost 10 times as many the federal government estimated in 1999, when blacks made up only 1 percent, or 8,500, of the estimated 850,000 home-schooled children.
"It's growing, and it's happening every day, in every county, in every state," said Joyce Burges, co-founder of the Louisiana-based National Black Home Educators Resource Association. Mrs. Burges has collected the names of about 500 black families from around ...