Read an Aug. 6, 2009, article from The Economist about the reasons families are choosing to homeschool their children.

See a Sept. 1, 2009, Fox News story about efforts to reverse a family-law judge’s ruling that a homeschooled girl should be moved into public education; among those protesting the ruling are religious-freedom advocates.

HomeSchoolFacts.com has news pages and forums and lists some of the more popular curriculum packages used by Christian homeschoolers.

Read an August 2001 report on homeschooling in America by Kurt J. Bauman of the Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau.

Read the executive summary of “Homeschooling in the United States: 2003,” from the National Center for Education Statistics. NCES is the primary federal repository for education data.

The Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have issued statements or resolutions supporting public education, according to resources offered by the Baptist Center for Ethics.

In 2006 the SBC passed a resolution that encouraged “all Southern Baptist churches to solicit individuals from their membership to engage the culture of our public school systems nationwide by running for election to their local school boards and exerting their godly influence upon these school systems.”

In 2004, the Southern Baptist Convention rejected a resolution that would have included a declaration against public school education and called for adherents to remove their children from public schools. Read about it in a June 16, 2004, article from The Baptist Press.

Bill Devlin is president of Redeem the Vote, a nonprofit organization that works to engage young people of faith in politics, especially through a voter registration drive. The group has been called the evangelical answer to MTV’s Rock the Vote. Contact Don Stillman in public relations.