Home education presents parents with a difficult proposition. They must foster academic achievement without the resources of a school. Teachers receive years of educational training. Some educators have expressed concern that homeschooling may make children less likely to achieve academically. Each state in the U.S. regulates homeschooling separately, and home-educated children are exempt from federal testing requirements. Consequently, it is difficult to assess the overall academic performance of home education.
Homeschooled children miss out on the benefits of socialization with children from other backgrounds and exposure to diverse points of view. Since children educated in the home tend to be exposed only to children from families they already know, the result is a social environment that can be lacking in diversity. One of the benefits of attending a large school, even apart from academic instruction, is the opportunity for a child to broaden his horizons by meeting people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
Stanford University political science professor Rob Reich has argued that parents may, intentionally or unintentionally, introduce bias into the education of their children, presenting their own point of view as the only correct one. In the case of students attending a traditional school, the presence of parents, teachers and fellow students has the effect of exposing students to multiple points of view. Exposure to diverse points of view helps foster independent and critical-thinking skills.
In addition to classes, schools organize a large number of extracurricular activities, such as drama clubs, sports and music. While some schools permit home-educated students to participate in these activities, others don't. With so many activities organized by schools, alternatives can be hard to find. This means that home-educated children may sometimes miss out on healthy and educational activities, and some homeschooled students may feel that the lack of extracurricular activities is a disadvantage when applying to college.