Rise of homeschooling among African-American families

Cheryl Fields-Smith, an associate professor in the College of Education's Department of Educational Theory and Practice, says she has done studies that mirror national trends of African-American families choosing to homeschool. "The schools want little black boys to behave like little white girls, and that's just never going to happen. They are different," she says in a recent article in The Atlantic.

The article takes a look at the increase in the number of African-American families choosing to homeschool as a way to avoid their children labeled as "troublemakers" and the idea that their children need to "behave differently." Homeschooling, Fields-Smith and other experts say, "is not a middle-class phenomenon."