The number of parents teaching their offspring at home will increase if the current public school system continues to be viewed as an irrelevant institution that can hinder a child’s ability to learn.
The rise of home-schooling reflects broadening dissatisfaction with formal education in the US. Discontent is high for two reasons. First, public schools are turning out a poor product--illiterate and unprepared graduates. For example, American 13-year-olds have been documented as having math skills that rank below their counterparts in 14 other developed countries. One survey noted that just one-third of high school juniors could place the Civil War in the correct half-century. Equally troubling, public schools have become scenes where drugs are sold, teachers are robbed, and homemade bombs are found in lockers.
Compounding the situation, teachers’ unions, school officials, and many politicians adamantly(坚决地) oppose the use of public monies(钱) for innovative solutions, such as vouchers and charter schools. Those alternatives, although not a panacea(万能) for all the present problems, are at least promising vehicles that could help poor and middle-income parents to find better schools for their children and break up the monopoly of a "one-size-fits-all" philosophy of education.
In light of the educational quagmire(沼泽) the US finds itself in, many parents, impatient for reform, are taking matters into their own hands. One alternative that is gaining growing public acceptance is the educational option known as home-schooling. Home-schooling is defined simply as the "education of school-aged children at home rather than at a school". Home-schoolers believe that students who receive instruction simultaneously from the home and the community at large will be more culturally sophisticated than those whose bulk of learning experience is confined to a school. Home-schooling families believe they are using their liberties well and wisely. The American can-do spirit is evident in the home-schools and households parents manage simultaneously. Those families, however, could use some further deregulation, be it through home-school tax credits or a loosening of compulsory attendance school laws, to make their task easier.
According to the text, the number of children being schooled at home has increased because ______.