LA QUINTA -- When 5-year-old Alexa Morgan was ready to start kindergarten, her mother, Julie, arranged for her to take a placement test with the Desert Sands Unified School District.
Breezing right through kindergarten- and first-grade lessons, Alexa quickly found herself in third- and fourth-grade subjects before she began to feel challenged.
"When I noticed that Alexa was advanced, I began looking at other schools and the possibilities for her," Julie Morgan said.
Although district officials were willing to place Alexa, Morgan said even private schools wanted her daughter to move at the pace of her appropriate grade level instead of her abilities.
So Morgan opted to home school her daughter, one of a growing number of parents across the nation choosing to educate their own children.
"I wanted to be able to try different things -- to work at Alexa’s levels," Morgan said.
Although accurate home school statistics are difficult to find because each state and program documents numbers differently, official estimates show about 200,000 children are home schooled in California.
The reasons vary, but most parents agree the quality of instruction and school safety issues have driven home schooling -- which has grown at a rate of 11 percent each year since 1991.
"I’m not for the abolishment of the public school system, but people are realizing that no one institution can serve everyone," said Marge Yeager, a spokeswoman for the HomeSchool Association of California.
"I think as the population increases and people grow in the understanding of how children develop, we are finding that there are more ways of learning than our society is used to acknowledging. Teaching does not have to happen for learning to occur," she said.
Since most schools receive federal money based on the number of students they have in the seats, some districts have started offering alternative education to keep up.
Desert Sands and Palm Springs Unified school districts receive some federal funds to supervise Independent Study Programs.
Parents teach their children using textbooks and a curriculum established by the district. Students come in only periodically to receive new work, or to take tests.
Ted Jones, a science teacher at Palm Springs High School, said he believes home school is ideal for certain students, like those who may not feel comfortable in a class setting, or those who have medical or religious preferences.
"But in my case, I teach science, and the (home school) students are not getting the same lab experiences, and the same practical application that a science teacher could give them," Jones said. "I suppose if the parent is willing to bring in tutors and help the student do the work, they could get through it."
Dale Crippen, supervising teacher for Desert Sands Unified’s Home Schooling Program, acknowledged parents are not required to be trained, and that other programs for home schooling students exist.
But Crippen said school officials were more concerned with what she calls "the underground movement" of students who don’t attend school at all, and whose parents are not held accountable for what their children learn.
"We wanted to make sure that nobody slipped through the cracks," he said.
State and federal legislation allows for parents to educate their children in whatever way they see fit.
Researchers have accounted for more than 500,000 home school students nationwide, but three times that number of students likely receive their education at home, officials said.
While some legislators have used the growing interest in home schooling to launch their own efforts for alternative education, such as vouchers and charter schools, Crippen said most educators are not too worried home schooling will develop widespread appeal.
"In the first place, it takes a parent who stays at home, or they have to hire someone to supervise it," he said.
Morgan spends four to six hours a day with Alexa, sometimes focusing on math and science, as set forth in the district’s lesson plans.
But Morgan also has flexibility to explore other options, like taking her daughter to the history museum or using her weekly tennis lessons to fill requirements in physical education.
"I ask Alexa what she wants to learn today," Morgan said. "She would have to spend up to six hours in class, but this way it seems like we have more time to do other things."
Crippen said a number of the 130 students in the district’s home school program have parents who travel abroad and others still who are professional athletes.
The district also has helped students training for the Olympics, students who needed the flexibility of a home school education.
But such cases are rare, and many parents find the commitment to be overwhelming. Some parents are not willing to give up the few hours they have each day for their own activities, Crippen said.
The home school students are required to take standardized tests, and frequently perform better than those students who attend regular classes.
"There are benefits to it, but it’s not fair to compare home schooling to regular school," Crippen said. "But none of these other students are getting one-to-one, four to six hours a day, from a teacher."
Perhaps the biggest criticism of home schooling is students don’t receive the kind of social interaction they get at school.
But according to home school officials, home schoolers rarely are so isolated they don’t participate in community activities.
"I was a little worried about the interaction," admits Morgan, who said one family friend assumed Alexa would become an "outcast."
"But we had a party at our home, and he apologized when saw how well Alexa interacted with everybody," Morgan said. "She’s a very outgoing child."