Rather than fight local school boards, some parents incur the costs of going the do-it-yourself route: home schools.

The Burlington Free Press runs a short profile of home-schooling in Vermont, where over 2,200 students go to school by heading downstairs, into the family kitchen, or elsewhere in the house. As you might expect, the ability to have a customized education and flexible schedule appeal to parents and students alike.

Home-schooling is not, stereotypes aside, a "red state" phenomenon:

Vermont's home school population has grown steadily over the past 25 years. In 1981, there were 92 home school students in the state. Last year, there were 2,215.

The article spends a lot of ink on religious motivations, but there are academic benefits:

Home school students are free from the rules and course requirements that abound in Vermont public schools. So an 11-year-old home schooler who would rather read "Jane Eyre" than learn to sew pajama pants in family and consumer science (a course Vermont public middle schools must offer) can skip the sewing project and delve into above-grade literature

Schools are required to teach sewing? As much as I can admire I craft I have no skill in, ... if this is indeed a requirement of Vermont schools, there's something wrong when a state requires sewing when you can buy a shirt for a tenth of the cost of what it would take in the value of your time.