Schooling At Home Tops 800 Report Card On County Schools Released By Momentum Panel

More than 800 children are taught at home in Spokane County and another 5,868 attend private schools, according to the fifth annual Momentum report card on the county’s schools.

The highest percentage of home-schooled students were in Deer Park and Riverside, with 3.5 percent.

In Spokane, 299 students were home-schooled in 1992-93, roughly 1 percent of children in the district.

This is the first time the report included home-schooling and private school numbers.

The report’s goal is to encourage improvement in the county’s public schools, said Wanda Cowles, cochairwoman of the Momentum report card committee.

“If you don’t have an educated work force it doesn’t matter how many businesses you bring to town,” Cowles said. Educated workers “don’t come full-blown from the womb to higher education.”

The report also includes data on test scores, enrollment and spending per student. Copies are available from Momentum.

Kathleen McCurdy, director of the Family Learning Organization, a Spokane home-school group, said the report underestimates the number of home-schoolers.

Families are not required to report home-schooling until their children are 8 years old. Reporting is not strictly enforced, she said.

“We’re closer to 5 percent in some parts of the county,” McCurdy said.

The report card may add data on weapons incidents next year.

“We want people to raise the tough questions,” Cowles said. “There are educators who don’t want that kind of thing in.”

Also in the report by the economic development group:

Free lunch: Public schools are serving more free and reduced-price lunches, indicating a growing proportion of poor children.

Forty-eight percent of lunches served were free and reduced-price, a 3 percent increase from two years ago.

Girls vs. boys: Girls far exceeded boys enrolled in advanced placement, honors and Running Start courses. But boys surpassed girls in advanced science and math classes, with the exception of biology.

Growth: In the four years beginning in the 1989-90 school year, county enrollments grew from 60,058 to 66,072, an increase of 10 percent.

Dropouts: The county’s graduation rate for high school seniors improved 2 percent over the previous year to 91 percent. But the four-year dropout rate, which includes grades 9-12, rose from 4 percent to 5 percent.

, DataTimes