I have 2 gifted children. Is it possible to just find a tutor to manage their entire education? That is, rather than spend $27,500 x 2 on private school, just put that money towards a salary for a personal tutor.

There may be some complications, of certification, or home schooling regulations. But I have to believe they can be surmounted and may be no more problematic than other solutions.

It may not be easy to find the right person, but I would think this would be an interesting and desirable job for the right teacher. We’re talking about a 2:1 ratio here, which seems beneficial for student, teacher, and parent alike. I suppose though the teacher might also have to be gifted, particularly for higher grades, and need to span from literature to math to science.

I am okay with home schooling, but find it hard to wear both parent and teacher hat. And like home school, with tutor, we may need to go outside for socializing and for science labs.

Anyone else doing this, or think it could work?

I know there are people who do this. But, I think it is state dependent. Some states allow for this option, and I believe it is widely exercised in the states that allow it. But some states, do not allow it. So, you'll have to do some research.

I've also heard of a few families going in together and splitting the cost of a tutor(s) and letting it run like a school, but it is technically homeschooling.

I would approach this exactly like a homeschooling situation with regard to local laws and regulations. One or both parents usually end up being the instructor in such situations, but there's nothing saying that they have to be. Homeschool co-ops are common,for example.

Homeschooling generally does not require any certification of the parent or other teachers, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I think finding the right candidate would be your biggest challenge.

I wonder how film companies get around this, or whether they avoid your state altogether, because full-time, on-set tutoring is how they fulfill the educational needs of child actors, per union contract and child labor laws.

This education budget eclipses our entire family budget. But if you have those kinds of funds available, I don't think hiring 1 person to do everything would be optimal. But there are plenty of online or live classes, with a live tutor to give personal attention. You can do it on a per subject, per year basis.

I *think* that child actors belong to a school, but the teacher just comes to the student. I think I've heard that before, but I really could be wrong here. This is just what I think I've heard.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We did something similar to this last year when we home schooled, but didn't use just one teacher. We hired a certified teacher as my son's language arts instructor, and another teacher for math. The LA teacher came 2x week, and he met with the math teacher every week. The rest of the classes were online classes. The cost wasn't anything close to what you're suggesting.

It sounds like thx1138 is thinking about someone to take over the full-time management of the homeschooling, not just tutor for an hour here or there.

And people are advising against this in favor of outsourcing on a per course basis.

I think the entire outsourcing idea is a good one.

I would have personally loved a private tutor. And I had what amounted to de facto control over my school.

thx1138 may have their own reasons for wanting to turn the whole operation over. People can suggest alternatives, but ultimately it is probably more helpful to answer the question that was asked.

I'm lucky that the grandparents are willing to foot the bill. (Maybe they feel guilty about screwing up my gifted education ;-) )

This would be in California. There is a gifted homeschool group in the Bay Area. They might be a resource. Also to ask about home school laws in California.

Offhand I thought that a teacher who was gifted, might have the ability to span across both language arts and math and science. But such teachers might be rarer. Where might I look for one. I guess starting local is the best idea.

Offhand I had thought to just have one teacher, rather than cobble together a curriculum. But I wonder if a teacher would be excited about this. Or how much they would cost. To some degree I am asking though, why pay for private school where the ratio is 7 or 10 to 1, when I could get a ratio of 2 to 1.

And how do people learn best. I was thinking the teacher could start one child on a task, then work with the other, and alternate back and forth. It would also allow for, asking the child what they are excited about learning today. Such options are beyond even the wildest dreams of a public school, where you stick to a rigid curriculum, and the teacher is tied down by the students who can't read.

Yes, I totally think that this could work.

The key is the right person. Probably a person with some teaching experience/equivalent training who also has some experience with curricular design, your state's intended scope/sequence (for testing requirements, as needed), and experience HOME educating children. Parents who have educated their own gifted children, basically.

Honestly-- while that might sound like a rare skill set, I know several people (myself included) that meet those criteria and are sort of leaning toward workforce reentry, but not really. KWIM?

I think in California home school is designated as a private school so legally it may be ok. You could have 2 teachers - one maths/science and one language/arts and have them do half days each or 2 full days each. Or you could hire someone full time and have them supervise on line classes in areas the can't do - if you could find someone who could cover language/history etc it is easy to find good on line maths. This assumes the kids are old enough to need specialists.

There are two private schools here in Southern California that teacher junior high through high school one-on-one. (I have talked to one of them to see if they could do just one class.) These are accredited schools and they set the students up with a tutor for each class. If you go full time they are AS expensive or more as private school. And while most kids go to one of their "campuses" they will send tutors out for more money. One of the types of students they attract are those who work in the entertainment industry. California also has quite strict rules as to the number of hours a youth can work on set. Until they are 18 or graduated from high school they can only work part time.

I realize that only affect kids 12+ and don't know how tutors for younger kids work. And this doesn't help the poster on her original question.

Perhaps you could look for a retired teacher or one who has just had a baby and wants more flexibility. Not sure where you would find such a person.

I wouldn't hire just one person, particularly in the upper grades. We are using a tutor this year for a foreign language course and its working amazingly well. She comes twice per week for lessons and then gives homework for the days she's not there. My son is moving through the material quickly because of this, which he prefers.

Just commenting because I'm setting up a private school and am becoming increasingly acquainted with incentive compensation in education: is this even an attainable skill set in a single educator for ~$55K/year full-time? Perhaps such a person could be hired on a part-time basis at that rate (is this what you had in mind, HK?), but that rate of pay is well below the market rate I'm facing here in an urban area.

My gut instinct is that retired teachers could be hired in subject blocks (e.g. humanities/LA, STEM), with your children supervised outside of part-time tutoring by a university student or yourself, for that budget.

Wanted to thank everyone for the helpful comments. I would add that meeting state standards is something many gifted kids can do for breakfast. Partly that the standards are not all that high, at least in CA, and partly that the kid is gifted. So I am not fussed about nor would emphasize for the teacher or the home school curriculum. Curriculum could be devised working with the teacher, drawing from existing ones popular in home school, like royal fireworks press in the humanities, and art of problem solving in math. I mostly see this going through 8th grade. Gifted kids seem to have more options once they make it to high school. Of course at high school level, specialized teachers, with higher salaries, become part of the mix. Don't people generally start mainstreaming their home schooled kids by grade 9? It would sure tax my memory or skills in calculus or chemistry. The goal really would be to assume (or pre-test) that the child would get a good ISEE or SSAT score, but the focus could really be on social and emotional needs, following their interest, and just giving them as much customized learning and attention as possible. I suppose I'm assuming that a college educated educator could handle most things a gifted kid up through 8th (6th?) grade would throw at them. Then again though, gifted kids could probably get up through high school by then, so maybe separate specialist teachers become needed. Another angle could simply be that it doesn't have to be a model where the teacher is omniscient and dispenses knowledge down to the student, but instead that the teacher is just a mature adult with strong teaching skills who could at times simply say "I don't know either, but let's learn how to learn and research the answer together on the internet". As far as the cost of teachers, I need to investigate. Maybe this only works if you have 3 kids. Still one wonders that if a private school has an 8:1 ratio, what they spend the other 5 x $27,500 on. It seems there is some inefficiency in there.

As to homeschooling through high school: we are, with high schools so work beginning around 10, in our case.

Yes, more or less. Part time-- maybe 2-3 hours a day? Honestly, that is all the time that many HG kids actually need in terms of live instructional supports.


Exactly-- I've not been that kind of omniscient educator with DD-- ever. She outstripped THAT ability outside of STEM and a few humanities topics by the time she was about 7yo.

I have a PhD, however, and teaching/curriculum development experience at the post-secondary level and at the primary level. I'm also something of a polymath, with some esoteric and unusual interests way outside my (admittedly fairly broad) base that spans botany through biochemistry through pharmacology through natural products/medicinal chemistry through neuroscience through vet-med through environmental chem through hard core instrumental methods of chemical analysis. All at that post-secondary (or beyond) level, and with the supporting math and modeling skill set. I also had a parent who was a scholar of English literature and a poet; plus a professional pianist and a studio musician and a math professor in my extended family.

So for me and DH, this wasn't a stretch at all. We back-filled with things that DD was interested in, and learned along with her as needed/desired, outsourcing when we got out of our own league.

Like aeh, though-- our family is unusual and with a PG child, we didn't feel like we had a lot of other options in front of us anyway.

One caution that I have about that kind of plan is that it often relies upon pretty significant teaching sensibility, and very definitely the kind of autodidactic mindset and KNOW-HOW that tends to come with an advanced degree. I grew up in that kind of every-moment-a-teachable-one environment, so it's very natural to me to BE that way, just as a lifestyle thing. DH did not, but he's an amazing teacher (truly gifted) when he chooses to be. He's mostly all wrong for our DD in particular, though. It's unfortunate.

I'd also (with all due respect) suggest that many HG children get into insightful territory where an advanced understanding of the subject is a good idea pretty young. Again, I'd look for someone with an advanced degree, and preferably someone with that polymath characteristic of insatiable curiosity.

DD9 undertook a months-long odyssey into Yad Vashem and the Righteous of the Nations that had her digging in the stacks of our local university and requesting interlibrary loans of pschology journals, examining Milgram's methodology... etc. All because she was hunting down altruism in human beings, and looking for just what goes into making a Ted Bundy versus a Raoul Wallenberg. What makes the latter tick, and why do they do what they do? Is it a feature genetically of humanoids? Etc.

My own background in neuroscience and an interest in history led me to be able to GUIDE her to resources, but beyond that, she was mostly on her own. We discussed a lot.

That's life with a PG child, though.

OP, you need to have a prospective tutor identified before making such a plan. Because the success of your plan is heavily dependent on the tutor.

My friend tried it last year for her PG 2e son who was under challenged in school even with acceleration. In her case, it did not work out because the tutor was not taking her son's education "seriously enough" according to her. She expected rigor and advancement in several subjects which did not happen. She was especially unhappy about the science content which was light. But, my friend was hands off in the curriculum design and lesson plans and expected the tutor to take care of it all.
My friend also expected a lot of "extras" like computer programming, art and craft etc which was not happening either. So, she fired her tutor and has hired a nanny to drive her son to various tutors and co-ops and now he seems to be getting the instruction at his level. And I hear that it is a lot cheaper than a full time tutor.
Hope this helps!

One advantage of the private school is the ready made pool of peers or near-peers. I don't know if I could duplicate our school's academics, but there is no practical way for me to duplicate the peer group.

This is what I was going to suggest. DD11 goes to a homeschool co-op with classes at the 8th / 10th grade level, barters babysitting for Chemistry help with one of the instructors (who has a PhD but also two young children), does online stuff at home, and wants to volunteer at an animal shelter. In another 18 months she'll be old enough for a class at our community college with an adult chaperon. We've also looked at local homeschool science labs, outdoor skills school, etc... which don't fit into our schedule right now but are options.

This works for us because DH is self-employed and has a highly flexible schedule. However if we both had office jobs, we'd probably hire a nanny to ferry her around during the day and sit in classes as necessary (we may still as her schedule gets crazier). The nanny would need a good report with your child (not all adults like gifted children), be good at researching educational options and classes, and be organized. But they don't need to know everything.

And for the record, don't assume you can reenter the system at some future point. DD left public midway through 4th and is now accelerated 2-4 years across subjects. I can't see a path to reentering at this time.

This was my thought, or: teachers fresh out of college who don't yet have a full-time teaching position. Or teachers still in college. I earned my Masters in Teaching through WGU, which is online, and would've taken a job like this when I was a student. At the salary you're considering, you would have to find someone who is being financially supported in some other way (like by their spouse), which will definitely make it harder.

There is also this. I have yet to talk with them about how they might handle gifted. http://www.fusionacademy.com/

Let’s draw up a first draft of the job description. Teach 180 8-hour days across nominally 36 weeks. Teach 2 children in our home.

Lets say the private school tuition is $27,500 per child. For 2 children that is $55,000. Plus transportation costs. At a first cut, we could offer $60,000 salary.

So that is 180 x 8 = 1440 hours of work. Call it 1500. So the nominal pay is $40/hr. Without benefits.

So to me, $60K/yr for 3/4 time work (9 months out of 12), doesn’t seem out of line. Of course, this is just a nominal number, derived from private school costs here (SF Bay Area). And as we know, the cost of living here is high. The math would be different in Wisconsin.

This approach is important, and I’m glad to see the strong response on this thread, because in many areas the public schools serve gifted inadequately. (Here in the Bay Area, they put out a lot of poor-mouthing (not entirely unjustified for California schools) along with “well here all our children are gifted”). Or there are limited or no true gifted private schools.

I also think its instructive to compare this option with private schools. If a private school has 10:1 ratio, in a sense one could say a classroom takes in $275,000, and after say $90,000 of that goes to the loaded cost of the teacher, where did the other $185,000 get spent? Just saying. Some of it went to the facility, and some of it went to the administration. With home tutoring, the facility is already paid for, and the parents are acting as administrators. And parents/kids spend less time bus/van/commuting.

We could also contrast (private) school and home tutoring on a qualitative basis. The social aspect would be hard to backfill. (Though this doesn’t really cost the private school anything). Or, my home may not include a science lab and an art room. Or specialist teachers for that.

So this brings us back to the idea above of having a team of specialist tutors rather than one teacher. Using again the above analysis, nominally those tutors can be paid $40/hr, and we can buy 40 hours of specialist tutors every week for 36 weeks before we burn through our $60K budget. I am becoming convinced this may be more workable for the simple reason that its more flexible and less of an all-or-nothing approach. If the math teacher isn’t working out, we forge ahead with the rest of the team and there’s not a lot of disruption while a replacement is found. It sounds promising, the only caveat, remember, we are asking the tutor to teach 2 students not 1. Of course there is some flexibility in general: maybe the gym teacher costs less than the violin teacher; maybe not all 30 or 40 hours a week need to be booked; maybe we go outside to a science class.

Of course, this is all just on the back of an envelope. In the end it would boil down to the general supply and demand (thus price) for this labor category, in my geographic region. And beyond that, to actually finding a specific teacher and negotiating a deal. This is true for the single tutor or the multiple specialists approach. I have to believe that the right teacher would actually relish the idea of teaching just 2 (gifted) kids in a quiet setting, rather than 24 in a public school.

I think though what I would miss from the private-school-for-gifted, is the community of parents and educators and their knowledge and experiences with gifted. The school comes with built-in gifted peers, and does a lot for SEN for gifted. It would be hard to replicate this. Home tutoring is not a total free lunch, because the parents are left with, well its a bit like being your own general contractor on remodeling your house. Though there are benefits to being intimately involved with the details.

I think your numbers sound about right. I just agreed to pay $50 an hour for a private writing tutor, who is a 5th year graduate student. Hopefully once a week for at least this year. I'm not in the Bay Area but it's still an expensive area of CA.

The complication of what you put together is organization more than anything else.

Reading homeschooling forums, it looks like many parents with elementary school age children do not not spend more than 2-3 hours a day on academics. I don't think children can handle 8 hours a day of direct instruction. Teachers are not providing instruction throughout the elementary school days. There is lunch (sometimes also breakfast) and recess, and "drop everything and read" (DEAR), also known as sustained silent reading. In some elementary school classrooms the children start the day by sitting on a rug and talking about what is happening in their lives. There are assemblies.

So you may not need 40 hours a week of tutoring at $40/hour but instead 15-20 hours of tutoring and 20-25 hours of babysitting, unless you do the latter yourself. Many people have observed that schools are in part educational institutions and in part day care centers. With three children and both of us working, we certainly value both aspects.

Good luck with your homeschooling/tutoring experiment.

I would have to guess that a fair chunk of that private school fee is profit that is lining someone's pocket.

OP, one thing that's not clear is, do the children need a paid adult watching over them (i.e. tutor is also nanny while parent(s) work)? Or is there a parent available to look after them during the day? If the latter, you don't need paid tutors/nannies for all those hours. And some of the budget can pay for online or live courses, which you could still supplement with tutors.

Looking at the fees charged (except for some Catholic schools, which are reasonable), I agree, but private schools, both at the college level and below, are typically organized as non-profits that can receive tax-deductible contributions. They often say that tuition only covers a portion of their actual costs, with the remainder covered by the endowment.

22B, the private school tuition sounds about right. There are many things that I would expect from a school - public or private - other than just academics. Most private schools near us need to do a lot of fundraising, even though they charge $30K/yr.

I think this depends upon where you live. I grew up in and currently live in a rather pricey area (though I has always been one of the "poor" folks here). When we moved to DFW area, I wanted to swim. It isn't warm enough to swim outdoors in the winter in that part of Texas. I thought I could just pay a nominal fee and swim at night at a HS pool. Folks there thought I was wacky because I expected every public (and private) HS to have an indoor pool. Turns out, the high schools there don't have indoor pools (or not many do). Where I am, you pretty much expect the indoor pool.

I know the pool isn't part of the academics, but I see lots of really nice facilities in the schools around here. People expect it. And facilities upkeep is more than one would expect. Especially some schools around here that have older buildings (by old, I mean some on the National Historic Register).

The single tutor, or even multiple tutors, is tricky. I know folks that have done homeschool co-ops (though not many near here), and that has worked well. Can you find a group of other parents near you who want to homeschool? Do they have degrees in different areas, or were they possibly teachers in the past? I know of kids who had co-ops in their neighborhood - they went to one kid's home for math, another for English, etc. depending upon the strengths of the parents. These kids went on to be successful in college.

Your numbers are over the top - even considering that you are talking about gifted kids and the Bay Area. Points to consider:
#1. No gifted kid with direct instruction works for 8 hours a day with a personal tutor of any kind.
#2. Gifted kids do not need daily personalized instruction on any one subject - they are typically instructed once in a topic and then allowed to work on it by themselves for a bit before they are instructed on another topic.
#3. Childcare/Daycare and tutoring are 2 different things.
#4. With small class size and teaching to the student, it should not take more than 2-3 hours/day to finish school for elementary years.

My child has tutors in 2 academic subjects that he is very strong at - we pay around $50-60/class (45 mins) in the bay area - he either attends 2 classes/week or 1 class/week depending on the complexity of the topic being covered. Even in that one class, there is time for my child to go off by himself and work on some things using what he has learnt. We pay more for private instrument lessons than that, but it is 2 lessons a week (1 on Theory and 1 on playing the instrument). He attends private school. But, if we were to extrapolate our current tutoring costs and decide to homeschool with tutors, we will not end up spending $28K for 1 child.

I aim to go back through this thread and reply to the many helpful ideas and questions. I can say immediately that I stand corrected in my over-estimate. A (gifted) child does not need/get 8 hours a day of instruction. If is half of that (or less), then indeed the model I'm proposing can work with just 1 child, and not require 2+ gifted kids being home-tutored.

Re: tuition-- Offering a customized experience is expensive. After costing out specialist teachers, facilities renovations, expert speaker series, and specialized sport instruction, I've hit $25k as break-even tuition for a nonprofit school in our urban location.

Personally, if I had 2 or more gifted children I wanted to homeschool under a tutor model, this is what I'd do with a $60K budget:

1. Hire a recent teaching graduate (ideally specializing in gifted education) with a degree in the teachable subject for an average of 2 hours weekly for each of:
- Math
- Science
- Language arts
- Social sciences (history, civics, geography)
- Music (private instruction, later adding ensemble training)
- Foreign language

For 40 weeks at $50/hour: $24,000

2. Engage community experts for:
- Phys ed: sport specific instruction in the community from experts (~1-2 hours/day, blend of structured and free play)-- Factor in at least $1,500/year for each hour of weekly instruction, including equipment per child, for sports that require a lot of gear/ $1,000 per weekly hour of low-gear sports
- Group classes for visual arts, drama, technology/engineering (~1 hour each) -- Factor in ~$1,000/weekly class
- Foreign language instruction (culture based community group--free)
- Theology (Sunday school-- free)

Community athletics & arts: ~$15,000

3. Buy memberships to the local museums and incorporate a lot of inquiry based learning in the community. $1,000

4. Set aside $20K and plan a few trips to interesting destinations that tie into your foreign language or social science studies. For instance, based on DS' interests this year, we'd see the pyramids in Egypt, visit some Medieval castles in the UK, tour old Quebec City, and head to Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta (maybe timed with the ski season to fit in some time at Banff).

So:
1. Tutors $24K
2. Athletics & arts $15K
3. Museums $1K
4. Travel $20K

*Note this assumes a parent or caregiver at home with child. Childcare would obviously be extra.

Thanks aquinas. I think you meant "12" not "2" hours per week under point 1. I like the idea of mixing in some travel.

I am not going to say that private schools are lining their pockets. There are too many of them, and their budgets are well audited, so it just doesn't stand to reason. But we do need to specify what they're spending money on and what I'd be spending money on. For example as mentioned, they have to rent a building. They need an administrator, while I have to fill that role, so that is a hidden cost.

Nope, 2 hours weekly for each of the subjects listed below. 12 total.

IMO, the greatest asset of homeschooling is flexibility, and travel fits in nicely.

If you pay someone to come to your home to teach, you are paying for their time teaching and indirectly for their commuting time, and the ratio of commuting time to teaching time will be large if the person is teaching a single subject for one or two hours. So one may consider getting lessons through Skype. And then you may consider getting the lessons for much less from someone in (say) India. I have read articles about children who attend school and are later tutored via Skype, often by people in other countries.

Re. high end private schools...

I think that most of the tuition goes toward infrastructure. We are close to a family who's child attends such a school. We often hear about things like:

* Overnight fieldtrips (rafting, skiing, etc.)
* School trips to foreign countries
* Parent meetings with teachers and a middle-school adviser
* Elaborate extracurricular activities, such as specialized lessons in juggling for a part in the school play

The student is clearly getting a highly personalized, top-notch education with lots of stimulation and opportunity...

But even if we could afford the tuition, this school would not work for us. Because they aren't going to let DD11 join as a 8th or 9th grader no matter how she tests (I called and asked) and I'm suspicious about their willingness and ability to support the extreme differentiation she'd need in an environment where "all of our students are gifted."

In terms of the OPs planning around tutoring, I strongly recommend combining at home learning with various classes and group activities... because it provides social stimulation and breaks up the week (the reason school kids have assemblies and other activities is to break up the monotony).

Bostonian just cut your tuition budget by 90%!

Sorry, OP, for hijacking your thread - I had to jump in and talk about these 2 points - my child visited a local "top private school" with fee in the $30K range and he laughed out loud at the extracurricular activities that they teach in that school - my DS has a few years of martial arts experience and what passes as martial arts instruction in that school might be equal to a white belt or orange belt level curriculum for him. And the swim instruction they were giving was way below his league because he is in a swim team already.
They told him that he was welcome to bring a book and read if the activity covered was below his abilities.
What I am saying is that they were not willing and don't have the ability to support extreme differentiation in extra curricular activities either!

So, for kids who want to "specialize" either in extra curriculars or in academics or both, even the priciest private schools will not work.

ashley you make a good point. Even the best private school is simply unable to provide more than a couple hours a week of 1:1 instruction. The business model long used in public and private education just cannot support that level of differentiation. I also agree with the important point that once down this road, there is probably no going back. The kids will just become too far advanced. But that's the whole point. I suppose they can re-enter the mainstream in college.

Seems to be a spectrum of options, from one full time teacher, 2 half-time teachers, and/or several specialists. The latter seem more flexible, but require more management. Still, I seem to be spending 5 hours a week driving my children around, and this approach would probably still need 5 hours but with less of it driving and more of it acting as an administrator of the team of tutors.

Valuable feedback that in fact a child does not really get or need 8 or 6 hours a day of instruction, probably more like 3. This could probably increase as they get older though.

I think the next step for me would be to follow aquinas lead and think about the curriculum and weekly and annual schedule. One more aspect, I would want to build in one or two or three tests a year to measure progress. Not sure which test though.

Bay Area has an excellent gifted home school group. I am sure if I connect with them they work towards solutions on peer group. They probably also have some co-ops and some thoughts on home tutoring.

Portia, Ivy, would your child return to the mainstream at college? FWIW my DS7 and DD9 are probably at the low end of PG and may try for the Young Scholars program some time.

Thx, if you want to bounce any costing ideas off me, please feel free to PM me. I'm in the thick of starting up a school and can speak to the administrative side of the teaching model, as well as offer some high-level commentary on curriculum choice.

Good luck!

DD's current plan is to become a veterinarian. So yes, there'll be college, but it may be some number of years early (just depending on where she's at academically and emotionally).

We feel like on the upper end we have a lot of flexibility. If she's not ready for full-time college when she runs out of highschool material, she can go abroad a year, study part time, do community college, do a deeper independent study with a tutor, spend a year of volunteering or in an internship (in her areas of interest).

And to agree with Portia about community classes, they may not be intellectually stimulating enough. Though I have to say some of her teachers are absolutely top notch, PhDs with young kids who wanted to keep a hand in their field, or with professional experience in the area (writing, art, etc.).

Hi, I have about that kind of plan is that it often relies upon pretty significant teaching sensibility, and very definitely the kind of auto-didactic mindset and KNOW-HOW that tends to come with an advanced degree. I grew up in that kind of every-moment-a-teachable-one environment, so it's very natural to me to BE that way, just as a lifestyle thing. DH did not, but he's an amazing teacher (truly gifted) when he chooses to be. He's mostly all wrong for our DD in particular, though. It's unfortunate.

Are home-school or home-tutor education expenses tax deductible?



http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/answers-about-education-tax-credits-and-deductions-part-1/

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/answers-about-education-tax-credits-and-deductions-part-2/

I'm not seeing a yes, for federal. Some states like MN might though.