“Deciphering home schoolers”
Get Religion has a post documenting some inadequate media coverage:
Even within the “strong Christian family” context though, families’ motivations for taking their children out of mainstream education settings vary greatly. Sometimes it’s exclusively religious reasons, as seems to be the case here, at least on the surface. Other times it relates to the parent’s desire to see their children receive an education that they believe will be better than the ones offered by their area’s schools. Other times it’s a financial issue. Sometimes parents believe home schooling better serves the needs of one or more of their children, and they send the remaining children to school.