So, what is your point? Have you seen the writings of those 5th graders in town? Or the high school students who somehow manage to graduate every year without knowing how to spell or do simple math? I think I would be pretty safe in saying that the home-schooled children are capable of much more academically than their public school peers. I know our own kids scored higher than their peers each and every time they were tested. They learned to spell properly, to do simple math equations without calculators and to write cursive. Those were the basics. They went way beyond that.