Last year, home-schoolers startled the educational establishment when they swept the top three places in the prestigious Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, nailing words such as "phrontistery" and "sphingine."
Just a week earlier, home-schoolers took four of the top 10 spots at the national geography bee.
This month, students who are taught at home -- just 2 percent of all school-age children -- will again make up more than 10 percent of the national spelling bee's participants and an even higher proportion at the National Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
Their success is no accident. Parents who home-school, often on the defensive about the quality of education they provide, are looking to these contests for vindication.
Some are spending thousands of dollars on specialized dictionaries, atlases and computer programs, and untold hours training their children for these high-profile proving grounds.
Critics argue that teaching to compete successfully in bees is more about gamesmanship than lasting educational achievement. But in a climate that puts a premium on the results of standardized tests, the bees give home-schoolers their own flashy scorecards to show the rest of the world.
"Clearly it makes a point that home-schooled parents can do the job," said Richard Jefferson, spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "For years, people were not convinced that home-schoolers were really up to the job of teaching our own children. So we've had to fight extensively in the public arena just to make sure people understood that we can do it. If another school system produced winners, what would they say? They would say, 'See our school system works.'"
Home-schoolers in the Chicago area have four of their own spelling bees, whose winners go on to compete with schoolchildren in higher rounds. The geography bees have a similar structure.
Mom starts a bee
Laura Yates of Antioch started a home-school spelling bee in Lake County after hearing about a home-schooler winning the national competition in 1997. For her, it was a way to offer her children academic competition.
Since then, she has amassed a library of books on word stems and etymology and thick dictionaries to help find difficult terms. She has fed her kids' appetite for new words by visiting bees at neighboring schools and purchasing word games on compact disc or tapes with strange pronunciations of equally curious-looking terms found in the Scripps Howard paideia, the spellers' bible of 3,600 words.
Along with math on the living room couch, science at the lake in their back yard and gym on a neighbor's trampoline, the Yates children have spent five to eight hours a day learning to decipher obscure spellings.
Lindsey, 15, qualified for the nationals last year, finishing 118th. Elliott, 13, came in third at the Chicago Tribune's suburban spelling bee in March. They both attribute it to home-schooling.
"It gives you so much freedom," Lindsey said. "If I was in school, I don't know how I'd study for it because I'd be so worn out with homework and sports. It allows me to focus in on something I enjoy."
Linda Bolt, of South Bend, Ind., has created flash cards and stuck word lists on windows and mirrors throughout the house to help her son, Erik, 13, study for the spelling bee. She entered him in the geography bee after learning about a home-schooler winning it in 1999 and reading about the bees in a home-schooling magazine.
This year, the national geography bee, with a $25,000 scholarship at stake, will be held in Washington, D.C. Tuesday and May 23. The national spelling bee, with its $10,000 prize, will be held May 29 through 31.
Home-schoolers reached the nationals of the spelling bee for the first time in 1992, and 27 did it last year. This year, 25 of the 248 competitors are home-schooled. The geography bee started seeing similar trends in the mid-1990s. A record eight home-schoolers are among 55 eligible contestants this year.
Image-conscious
Over the years, the Home School Legal Defense Association has helped improve the public's image of an estimated 1.2 million home-schoolers across the nation by emphasizing high standardized test scores. A 1998 study commissioned by the association showed that children taught at home typically score between the 70th and 80th percentiles in national tests.
The association also highlights the bee results, which Penny Beihl of Saluda, S.C. -- a former private elementary school teacher -- believes are important to changing public perception.
"I'll be checking out of a store and people will ask the kids, 'Where do you go to school? And they find out and say, 'How do you know they're learning anything?'" she said.
Beihl grills her sons daily on world facts and has compiled a geography-version of the "20 Questions" game for the dinner table. Her son, David, 15, won the national geography bee in 1999, and now her second son, Tommy, 13, will be in the national spelling and geography bees this year.
"I think obviously they must be learning something," Beihl said. "This is my job. If my (son) wants to do it, I'm going to help him achieve it."
A little Greek, Latin
The kids often drive the process. George Thampy of suburban St. Louis, the 2000 spelling bee champ, developed his own list of 3,000 words from dictionaries and via Internet Web sites. He dabbled in a little Greek and Latin.
The 13-year-old also came in second in the geography bee last year. This year, his sister, Mallika, 12, will be in the national spelling bee.
"I think one of the obvious benefits of a home-school education versus any other trend is you can focus on specific needs and interests in your education," said Paige Kimble, director of the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. "Children in other types of schooling follow a set program regardless of whether they are interested or need that program."
Public educators don't think the bee victories mean much.
"I think they can prove that home-schooling is a viable alternative without using that as an example," said Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. "If I was in the home-schooling movement, I'd say, is that the way you want kids to spend their time, sitting around all day and memorizing lists of spelling words or facts.
"Education is not 'The Weakest Link' or 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' You're not an educated person because you can memorize pages of esoteric words. That's why you have spell check on your computer." Jefferson dismisses the criticism. "What is wrong with memorizing?" he said. "How else do we learn Spanish or another foreign language? How else do I know how to drive? Memorizing, we all do it."