Queen Creek mom of 4 takes a more progressive approach to homeschooling

Homeschooling is gaining traction in Arizona. With the rise of school choice, a global pandemic that closed schools, and the availability of state-funded school vouchers for any kid in the state — it’s becoming more mainstream.

In fact, homeschooling has increased at a rate of more than 5% across the country in the last year, according to research from Johns Hopkins — that’s nearly three times the pre-pandemic rate of around 2%.

Brooke Bentley is a real estate agent and mom of four in Queen Creek. She started homeschooling her kids four years ago. She also founded what she says is one of the few secular homeschool enrichment programs in the area, called PATH — Progressive Academic Thoughtful Homeschool Collective.

Many programs like that are religious and decidedly not progressive.

So, Bentley isn’t like a lot of homeschooling moms for that reason, and she is not anti-public education. In fact, her youngest daughter is still in kindergarten in a public school. All of her kids started in public schools, but one by one, she pulled them out — she says because she found it’s not one-size-fits-all.

For her oldest son, it was about catching him up after a bad third grade year. And for her second, it was about tailoring a curriculum to his needs. They found out he was severely dyslexic a few years ago, and Bentley wasn’t sure about the school’s solution.

“Cole was pulled out of general education and put into a special education classroom with eight nonverbal kids,” Bentley said. “And I know they wanted to give him more one on one and help him learn to read because he was not thriving in that gen-ed classroom.

“But by the end of the year, he still didn't know his alphabet and was, I think, hindered socially being in a classroom with nonverbal children. So I knew that that was not a good fit.”

The Show spoke with her more about her decision to homeschool, her thoughts on the politics surrounding ESAs in Arizona and how it all works.

Once you decide to homeschool a kid, you can buy a curriculum to follow. And there are a host of different kinds with varying perspectives. Bentley said teaching three different kids at three different grade levels involves a lot of prep.

Full conversation

BROOKE BENTLEY: Three different grades, and all the subjects within that grade. So you have your writing and your reading and your math and your science and your history and cursive and all the things that kids learn. And you’re handling all the subjects for all of these children.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot of prep time. It’s a lot of research into curriculum — what’s rigorous, what’s going to fit my child and their learning style. Yeah, it’s a ton of work.

LAUIREN GILGER: Yeah. OK. And beyond that, you’re also a real estate agent and you have a job. And then you’re also running on Fridays a collective of sorts, like a microschool for other homeschooled kids, right?

BENTLEY: Right, right. So it’s a homeschool enrichment program. And this is our second year, so we’ve grown tremendously this year. We started last year. We had 27 kids and three teachers, essentially, including myself.

And this year I’m not teaching, I’m just running it with the other founder. And we have almost 25 teachers and 103 students. So it’s exploded this year, which is a testament to how much these types of programs are needed in the homeschool community.

GILGER: Right, right. And homeschooling has in general exploded as well.

Talk a little bit about why you think that is. Like, why do you think more kids are finding your program in particular, but also just more families are opting for homeschooling?

BENTLEY: Because education’s just not one-size-fits-all. So if you have a child that’s not thriving in public school, charter school, private school in the traditional classroom, it’s very tempting when you see homeschoolers who can cater their education to their child’s needs.

And so especially with the ESA funding being universal. As of a few years ago, it used to be just for children with disabilities. Now anybody can receive those funds if they homeschool.

And so that opens a ton of opportunities for families who otherwise wouldn’t be able to homeschool. I think it’s exploded for that reason as well. At PATH, a good chunk of them are homeschooling because they have a neurodivergent child. And if that’s not the case, a lot of them are homeschooling because they want the family time.

They want more time with their kids. We send our kids to public school, and they come home and they do their extracurriculars and it’s dinner and bedtime. And I think parents are just kind of feeling like they’re missing out on a large chunk of their kids’ childhood. And then always more individualized learning.

GILGER: Yeah, let me ask you about that, because it’s a form of trying to socialize your kids who are at home instead of in a classroom full of kids every day.

I think one of the kind of traditional critiques or suspicions about homeschooling is that these kids are isolated. How do they learn to get along with other kids? Is this the answer?

BENTLEY: Yes. I mean, that’s the most common question I get as a homeschooling parent is. Even my neighbor, he’s a good friend, but I had to laugh when I told him we were gonna homeschool, and he’s like, “Well, aren’t you worried about your kid being weird?”

I’m like, I think I would have asked the same thing at one point, and it is the most common question. But honestly, being socialized just means learning to live in a community. It doesn’t require a classroom. It requires people. And I think homeschoolers, they do have to be intentional about creating those opportunities for their kids.

But on the other hand, I feel like my kids are exposed to a more diverse population of people. And I think having the Friday school as well has been really helpful because our microschool provides them an opportunity to see the same kids every week and really deepen those relationships.

GILGER: Yeah. Talk a little bit about the kind of politics surrounding this, not just of the ESA program we’ll get to in a moment. But it sounds like you, unlike a lot of homeschooling families, pulled your kids out of school because you thought it was too conservative, maybe even too religious.

BENTLEY: Yeah, in some ways, yes. Especially in the neighborhood I’m in, a lot of conservative families, a lot of religious families. And that’s great — that’s not how our family operates. And so I noticed, looking into how to teach my oldest history, that it was not taught to me in a transparent way at all.

I look back in my education, I’m like, I never learned about a lot of these things. Why were these people’s stories left out and not highlighted? So I started recognizing that I wanted to teach my kids a more transparent history and really highlight a lot of the voices that I think traditionally aren’t. Women, people of color, LGBTQ community — those kind of stories that really weren’t included in the history textbooks when I was a kid and a lot of times aren’t now.

GILGER: What are your thoughts on public education? Like, it sounds like you are not super critical of it in general but just thought maybe there’s a better way.

I mean, do you think that public education is doing what it should be doing in our state?

BENTLEY: You know, I think it’s essential. I think for a lot of families, it’s critical. I think it’s just not one-size-fits-all, especially for kids with learning disabilities or any kind of diagnosis. It’s really difficult in a classroom setting, especially with 29 other children, to receive individualized education. And so for some kids it works, but for my son with dyslexia, it just wasn’t a fit.

So having the opportunity to homeschool is a privilege. I’m grateful we live in a place where I can do that and I can cater their education to exactly where they’re at, not just between children but between subjects.

GILGER: So tell us how this has worked, not just for your daughter or your oldest son, but for your son with dyslexia in particular. Like, you’re having to learn a lot about, I’m sure, how to teach a curriculum like that to a kid with challenges like that. But is he doing well? How’s it working?

BENTLEY: Yeah, I mean, it’s been such a journey, even for me, because there’s no how-to guide or manual. It’s no joke. I mean, it’s really a challenge. And he has severe dyslexia. And so we have tried a lot of different programs and finally settled on one that he seems to be making progress now, and he’s slowly starting to read.

He’s in fifth grade now. And so as you can imagine, being a fifth grader not reading fluently is a huge hit to your confidence when you’re with your peers. And so we’re working really hard to try and get him reading fluently. And part of that is having that ESA funding allows us to hire a tutor who is certified in this program.

GILGER: So let’s talk about the ESA funds because they are controversial in the state. We’re the first state in the country that made them universal so that everyone could access them kind of no matter what, for any reason like this educationally.

And it sounds like you’ve really benefited from that. You think that’s part of the reason homeschooling is kind of booming right now.

But there’s lots of critiques about abuses of that program, like parents buying giant Lego sets, trips to ski resorts, things that raise a lot of eyebrows when you’re looking at spending public funds. What are your views on that and how the program is being implemented in the state?

BENTLEY: Yeah, you know, I’m sure there are things that slip through the cracks or silly things are bought. But in my experience, every single thing I’ve bought has to be backed up by curriculum. For example, if I want to buy a box of pencils, I have to have a curriculum that shows it requires pencils.

So it’s not just willy-nilly. I’m sure there are people who abuse the system like any system, but for the most part, it’s pretty well run. And our curriculum is required for any supplemental material that you want. So I do a lot, I spend a lot of time just even there, uploading curriculum. And all the things that I buy I have to show documentation for.

GILGER: Right. So from your point of view, it’s very kind of tightened up. A lot of the debate around this at the state Legislature is putting on safeguards, checks to make sure that people are following the rules like you are. Do you think that would be a good thing?

BENTLEY: I absolutely do. I really do. I mean, I have no problems with that at all. I think that we should be spending that money responsibly as homeschool parents. And so I’m willing to jump through those hoops to show documentation and show curriculum for the things I buy. If that’s necessary and it prevents abuse of the system, I’m for it.